The Enigma of Infatuation
by livefvrever
Summary: Shy, awkward genetics professor Fang believes he has love down to a science. But that's is thrown out the window when he meets Maxine, a girl that completely fails his questionnaire. But gradually, Max teaches him that love can't be measured on a bell curve, and feelings can't be calculated. [DISCONTINUED WITH NO HOPE FOR REVIVAL]
1. Chapter 1

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BE-

It was exactly 5:34 in the morning. I knew it because the alarm clock I'd had for the last seven years of my life would always ring forty-three seconds before it was supposed to, and so I had trained myself to wait for exactly three and a half _beeps_ to turn it off.

I pulled myself out of bed and felt around for my glasses on the bedside table. Placing them on the bridge of my nose, I blinked twice before my vision came into focus. I had exactly twenty-five seconds to get into the shower if I wanted to stay on schedule for the day. And I could _not_ afford any delays.

A typical shower took me three minutes and twelve seconds, but if I wanted to wash my hair it would take an additional minute and twenty seconds. This was due to the fact that conditioner had to stay in your hair for sixty seconds after application. It said so on the back of the conditioner bottles, and I wasn't one to argue with hair experts. It must have been working, because I was thirty-five and was fortunate enough to not yet be losing hair like many of my colleagues. They, no doubt, did not follow the instructions on the back of their shampoo and conditioner bottles.

After my four minute and thirty-two second long shower, I dressed in under a minute and walked to the kitchen to check my messages while I ate breakfast. Multitasking was always a huge part of my day -it was easy for me, and it made sense to do two things at once to conserve time. Humans, on average, only live for eighty years. If there are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, that means that each human has only 29,200 days to spend. Why waste even one of them?

The blinking light on my answering machine indicated that I did indeed have messages that needed listening to, which was interesting because it didn't blink too often. As I pressed the button, I busied myself with my breakfast. I had the same thing every morning -oatmeal with various fruits and nuts. It was high in protein, low in carbs, and took less than two minutes to prepare. As I chopped strawberries, I heard Iggy's voice issue from my answering machine. "Hey, Fang. Really sorry to bother you, but I'm going to be out of town on the twentieth and I need you to take over my lecture on PDD at the public school for me. I knew you'd appreciate an advance notice, so here you go. Thanks again, man."

The answering machine beeped, and before I could consider Iggy's message, a different one began, this time from my mother. "Happy birthday, Nicholas! I'm sorry to not call earlier, but I assumed you'd be busy with your research... Anyways, your father and I wanted to know when you're planning to come home to celebrate; I've already bought the ingredients for carrot cake -your favorite!"

I waited for a few seconds before the light on the answering machine went out, my mouth full. Perfect timing -I dumped my bowl in the sink and headed out of the door for my morning jog.

I could deliver Iggy's lecture for him, but there was a minor problem -I knew nothing about PDD; not even what it stood for. It sounded like a psychological disorder, which wasn't in my scope of research at all. It wasn't that big of a deal -the twentieth wasn't for six days, so I could research whatever it was during lunchtimes and develop a coherent lecture before then. But the timing was very annoying -in order to become an expert on the subject, I would also have to give up the sixty-four minutes I had previously allotted during each Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday evenings to clean my bathroom.

Which left me with three options.

1) Skip cleaning the bathroom to work on the lecture. Not very appealing to me, as I would then have to be subjected to the multiplication of germs all over my bathroom faclities, which would increase risk of infection of some disease or other, which would throw my entire schedule off for many weeks.

2) Ask Iggy to just do the lecture himself. Also not appealing because he was one of my four friends and I didn't want to make him angry. Besides, he had done so much for me during our friendship, and I was sure I owed him this favor for something or other.

3) Clean the bathroom after working on the lecture, which would result in less than eight hours of sleep, a shift in my Circadian rhythm, and a loss in overall mental and physical performance. However, this seemed like the best option at the time.

I finished my morning routine of jogging, loading my bag, and biking to the university without any hitches or delays in schedule, and subsequently I arrived exactly three minutes before the Dean herself arrived. I was locking my bike to the rack as she walked up to me. "Hello, Professor Newton."

I straightened quickly and remembered to make eye contact. "Hello, Dean Winchester."

She smiled rather coolly -perhaps I didn't shake her hand like I ought to have? But it was too late now -she was already walking up the large stone steps to the university. I followed, keeping my distance. I had never managed to get the Dean to like me -or even smile at me. I didn't know how Iggy did it -but then again, he was one of the most charismatic, socially competent people I knew.

I stumbled up the steps and entered my immaculately kept office. I checked the clock on the wall to find that it was 7:59 in the morning. I was one minute early, which irritated me slightly.

Arriving early for me is a waste of time. There are so many other things I could be doing -like cleaning the bathroom. I shook my head and laid my messenger bag out on the desk. I had barely even begun to open it when I heard a knock on my door.

"Fang Newton!" Iggy's loud voice preceded him into the room.

Everything about Ignatius Jefferson is big and loud -he's nearly seven feet tall and thickly built too, as he was a former football player at his alma mater. He's got bright red hair that his wife often jokes about being visible from outer space. While I don't believe that's physically possible, I do have to concede his hair _is_ very noticeable. It's thinning a bit, but what forty-five year-old's hair isn't? He's the director of psychology at our university, which means his office is a lot larger than mine, which means he doesn't knock over things in his own office like he's prone to doing in mine.

Iggy insists that everyone call him that; from students to colleagues to even esteemed professors. In fact, I haven't heard anyone call him Professor Jefferson in a long time. It was he that actually nicknamed me Fang, because he said something about my bite being worse than my bark. And now all my four friends call me Fang, so I have him to thank.

"Hey, Iggy," I said, acting casual. I tried to lean on my desk but I overestimated the distance between my body and the mahogany top, and I ended up nearly falling. Iggy just laughed.

"Always the same, huh, Fang?"

I shrugged. "What brings you here?"

Iggy dropped his loud voice to a loud whisper. "Well, the wife and I were talking about a double date, and she reckons she's found the perfect woman for you this time."

I like Ella. She's my age, ten years younger than her husband, and she's a clinical physiotherapist, although she acts as a regular therapist to her family and friends. She and Iggy are my two friends who are not related to me. Her cooking is superb as well. But lately, she has also taken on an additional role as my personal matchmaker, which hasn't been working out so well. I think she should stick to her job of being a friend; it's not necessary for her to also be a matchmaker. Especially because I seem to be incompatible with every single woman in the universe.

"I don't think the fifty-seventh time's the charm," I said plainly, and Iggy's face furrowed.

"What're you talking about? She hasn't set you up with fifty-seven girls!"

"Fifty-six, actually," I said. "And yes, I have. I can recite all their names to you in alphabetical order, if you wish. Abbie. Amy. Angela. Brooke. Cindy. Daphne. Darcy. Esmeralda. Eve -"

"Woah, woah, woah, there, mate," Iggy said, rubbing his eyes. "You're bullshitting me."

Annoyed that he interrupted my train of thought, it took me a few seconds to respond with a third-grade answer. "Am not."

"You haven't actually memorized all these girls' names, right?"

"Along with their star sign, favorite color, favorite food, and favorite episode of M*A*S*H." I said.

He blinked and then grinned. "Wow. Okay, Mr. Database. Shoulda expected nothing less of you." He rolled his eyes. "Just say yes this time, okay? Ella reckons she might be a good fit for you. It's not going to be another pistachio ice cream." he said.

I winced as he mentioned it. The Pistachio Ice Cream Incident happened with Ella's sixteenth match -a sweet girl by the name of Lissa. I was thirty-four when the match happened, and she was thirty-two but tried her best to look younger. She was conventionally attractive, with thick dark red hair, bright eyes, and a pretty smile. She was a biology teacher at a local high school, and our conversation naturally turned to the developments in the world of polymerase chain reactions for a while. We had dinner at a strongly recommened Mexican place near the school where she worked, and we were still going strong by the time dessert rolled around. That was when she said,

"I don't much like Mexican desserts."

I paused for a moment, wondering how I could save the day. I didn't really want the night to be over, for it wasn't very often that I found someone so interested in genetics as I, so I was saved when I found a Baskin Robbins across the street. "We could go for ice cream," I said casually.

Lissa considered this, and to my relief, nodded after a moment. "Only if they have pistachio ice cream."

I was pretty sure they'd have it, considering that Baskin Robbins boasted on having 31 distinct flavors. Upon entering the store, I realized that they only had twenty-nine flavors in commission -the ones out of stock being Rocky Road and, of course, the elusive Pistachio. I gave the teenage girl working behind the counter a besmirching glance, for she had failed me, and said, "Do you have anything that tastes like Pistachio?"

Lissa's eyes rolled as I mentioned this, but the girl held up a tiny spoon of Black Walnut, which I handed to Lissa. She didn't even put it in her mouth. "It won't taste like pistachio."

"Well, obviously it looks different, but the basic flavor is the same," I said, trying it myself. "They both have a nutty base -"

"I think _you_ have a nutty base," Lissa muttered, crossing her arms. I could sense the coldness radiating from her, or maybe it was just from my own brain freeze. Either way, I had to do something drastic to save the night.

"I'll take a scoop of Black Walnut and a plain vanilla, please," I told the girl behind the counter, who got busy making the orders. By the time I turned around with the ice cream, Lissa was gone.

Needless to say, Black Walnut became my new favorite ice cream flavor.

Iggy's loud voice brought me back to the present. "Fang! Nick! Professor Nicholas Newton!"

I jerked out of my reverie. "Huh?"

Iggy smirked. "So are you coming or not?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. There are appproximately three and a half billion women in the world, so the chances of Ella's 'Perfect Match' actually being the perfect match for me is miniscule. And that's even if you factor out the women that are separated by geological distance relative age, cultural and language barriers -"

"And whether or not you've already gone to town on them," Iggy interrupted, and I grinned ruefully. "Well, since that's clearly a no, I'll let you get to it. Grading papers." Iggy winks at me and is about to walk out the door when I stop him.

"Wait. I'll do it. But you have to at least tell me what PDD is," I said, remembering his voicemail.

Iggy smirked. "Remember my thesis paper on the autistic spectrum? The huge-ass, 400-page-long mammoth of bullshit? I'll have someone deliver it to you. And be sure to dress up for tonight -none of that Stephen Hawking stuff." He gestured to my Tuesday shirt -a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy superimposed over a Stephen Hawking quote. _The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities._ I don't think the quote makes much sense but Ella gave the shirt to me as a gift for my birthday, so I adopted it as my Tuesday shirt.

I didn't have any lectures scheduled until the afternoon, so I decided to use the time to grade papers. Recently I had my class write about the effect of calcium deficiency on the growth of week-old embryos, and most of the papers so far had been quite... interesting to read. I began grading, which was monotonous work, and so it allowed my thoughts to drift elswhere.

I drifted to Ella's matchmaking project, or as she called it, the Girlfriend Project. Ever since I met Iggy and Ella three years and three months ago, she had been trying to set me up with women. Women she knew, women Iggy knew (because he had slept with them), and women she had even advertised for on Craigslist.

To prove my own point, I pulled up a Craigslist ad Ella had put up a few months ago for me, and although she had decorated the paper with flowers and wonderful pictures of scenery, it still sounded ominously like a kidnapping message. _Looking for a smart, humorous girl who also likes to have fun!_

And then it hit me. The Girlfriend Project was failing because there were usually no precursors for the women Ella selected -they just had to look presentable and not be complete drug addicts. If my dating experiences had taught me anything, besides how to duck when a martini flew at me at 60 mph, it was that I needed a very specific type of girl to suit me. There had to be a way of weeding out the good from the bad. And what better way to do so than a questionnaire?

Pushing my student's papers aside, I felt fresh adrenaline release from my suprarenal glands and course into my bloodstream as I began to type on my computer.

I kept typing, excitement flooding through me, until it was nearly lunchtime and I very carefully saved the document I had been working on. I always ate lunch with Iggy unless he happened to be 'consorting' with someone else in his office. Iggy and Ella had an open marriage, and Iggy exploited it to the max.

I was eager to tell Iggy the progress I had made on the recently renamed Spouse Project, but today I was not lucky; Iggy was busy helping a professor from the humanities department analyze the psychological effects of Holden Caulfield's actions in _Catcher in the Rye_ , as his secretary told me, so I retired to the courtyard by myself. Pulling out the Japanese miso soup and salad I had bought on my bike ride to the university, I ate as I watched a family of ducks swim in a perfect V across the pond.

I pulled out a paper from a rising star in my class -Dylan Haas. His family had recently emigrated from Austria, and he was studying biomedical engineering to become a doctoral technician. He was extremely bright. Even though his papers had a few grammatical errors I could forgive them because English was his fourth language or so and he had the speaking ability of a seven-year-old.

I read through Dylan's paper, nodding at his wonderful insight into the prescription of injective medication for the lack of calcium and the side effects that posed, and was about to award him top marks yet again when I spilled soup all over the paper.

Ten minutes later, I was outside the Dean's office, heart thumping, clutching Dylan's still-dripping paper to my chest. The door opened and she frowned, not unkindly, but in a way that made me think perhaps I should leave -but it was too late. I sat down in the chair across from her desk. Even when I was sitting down, I was still almost taller than her -Deah Winchester was a short woman, probably around 45, height about five feet two inches. She sat down across from me.

"Professor Newton, what brings you here?"

I placed the soup-stained paper on her desk and she winced. "It's Dylan Haas," I said, before she could say anything. "He's been... plagiarizing."

She squinted at the paper. "How do you know?"

I pointed to the fourth sentence in his twelfth paragraph. "That sentence was taken directly from a paper from the graduating class of 1995," I said. "He's clearly plagiarizing, and our policy regarding plagiarism is that we don't tolerate it at all."

The Dean blinked. "So you want me to expel him?"

"We have to uphold the rules," I said, although my insides squirmed. "Why have them, otherwise?"

The Dean sighed. "Nicholas, I'm sure you know what a lovely student Mr. Haas is. Top marks in all his classes. He's one of the students who raises this college's reputation. To expel him for copying one sentence out of a twenty-year-old paper... it's just madness. Surely you agree."

I blinked. "We have to uphold the rules," I repeated. " _That's_ what gives the university prestige."

"I'm sure _I_ can decide what gives the university prestige," the Dean snapped. "You're a very diligent person, Nicholas. Most others wouldn't have even caught this... error. So we'll let Dylan off with a warning this time."

"But -"

"That's enough," Dean Winchester snapped, and I backed out of the room, taking the plagiarized paper with me.

As I walked back to my office to prepare for my lecture, it occurred to me that morality was one of the biggest things I expected in a woman. For that reason, I was sure the Dean and I would not be compatible in any way. If she was willing to bend the rules to save face, who knew what else she would be willing to do?

I pulled out the pencil I kept stashed perpetually behind my ear and began scribbling on a piece of paper. I had to thank the Dean- she had given me inspiration for Question 1.


	2. Chapter 2

The problem with having the director of the neurobiology department be best friend was that he was always busy and had little to no time to interact at all. As far as weekends went for me, this one was pretty packed -on Saturday, I had Iggy's lecture at the public school, and on Sunday, I had the double date with Ella's Match #57. It had originally been scheduled for Tuesday evening but Ella had some emergency client or other and she had to reschedule.

Which was good for me, because I had to talk with Iggy about two things. One, the lecture on PDD which I was making little to no headway on. Two, the questionnaire that I needed an expert's opinion on.

I knew I was supposed to be working on Iggy's lecture. He had delivered his 400-page-paper to me, and I had spent about ten minutes skimming the majority of it, but I couldn't concentrate on the "piles and piles of bullshit," as he so eloquently phrased it himself. Instead of devoting my lunchtimes to research, I devoted them to developing my questionnaire. I had skipped Tuesday's cleaning of the bathroom, and I could already see the buildup of bacteria on the wall. Although I could admit that I had been hallucinating.

Today was Wednesday, and I was having mild panic attacks. I had made an appointment with Iggy's secretary, Deandra James, to see Iggy. I waited in one of the cushy armchairs in his office. Iggy's office was quite large, measuring approximately fifteen feet by thirteen feet. He totally exploited his status as the head of the neurobiology department at the college. There was a flat-screen television in the corner, which was currently tuned to the Game Show Network.

Instead of watching Deal or No Deal, I busied myself with organizing my papers into some sort of organized pile. My biggest vice was that I was disorganized to the outside eye. It wasn't a big deal to myself, because I could always find whatever I was looking for within ten seconds. Right now, I was looking for page 1 of my questionnaire.

"Ten, nine..."

I dug through the piles of paper on my lap and jumped as a loud voice boomed over me. "Fang, m'boy! Whatcha up to?"

Three... two... found it! I stood up triumphantly to see Iggy towering over everyone, as usual. "I need your advice."

"What on?"

Suddenly, seeing Iggy's jovial face, I wondered if this was the right time to bring up my questionnaire. I decided to ask him my PDD question first. "I'm having trouble keeping up with my schedule thanks to your lecture." And I proceeded to tell him my three options. "I could skip cleaning the bathroom, but-"

"Fang." Iggy cut me off halfway through my long-winded speech. "Get a cleaning lady. Please. I'll even pay for her."

I faltered. Iggy, as usual, had come up with a perfect solution. "But what if she makes errors?"

"Like what? Stealing your hair gel?" Iggy smirked. "C'mon, kid. It's just rubbing a Clorox wipe over a few tiles. I'll set the whole thing up. You focus on..." His eyes traveled downwards, to where pages 2-5 of my questionnaire were lying on the ground. "Is that a multiple-choice test?"

"Erm..." I pushed the papers underneath a chair with my foot.

"The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell." Iggy guffawed. "Don't worry, man. I'll call Gloria and set everything up. Actually, while you're here, I have a message from Ella. She says to brush up on your dancing skills."

"What? Why?"

Iggy raised his eyebrows. "Monique's a dancer. Also, for the love of God, please don't wear that shirt on Sunday."

I looked down at my Wednesday shirt, a blue one that said _Biology: the only science where multiplication and divison mean the same thing_.

"It's funny!"

"It won't get you laid."

In any case, he didn't have to worry. My Sunday shirt was my favorite one.

* * *

In the end, I didn't end up showing him my questionnaire. I thought that between Iggy and Ella, his wife had the softer disposition and therefore was less likely to laugh in my face when I asked her for advice.

I finished the lecture on PDD with a couple of trips to the university medical library during my lunch breaks, without sacrificing my proper nutrition. Pervasive development disorder was actually quite fascinating. I thought I should take a few moments to focus on the genetic inheritance and prevalence of the disease, because it definitely stemmed from human DNA. It also made the lecture more or less related to my own work, which focused on the genetic nature of alcoholism.

Basically, I spent many long hours getting mice blackout drunk and trying to get them to have sex.

Iggy's lecture, although I suppose it was _my_ lecture now, was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. at an inner-city high school. I calculated the amount of time it would take for me to bike there, accounting for traffic and accidents and leaving a 37-second standard deviation. I also had to allot three minutes to connect my computer to the projector.

I reached the school at exactly 6:57, right on time. Gloria, Iggy's highly-recommended cleaner, had arrived earlier that evening, and had asked me very politely in Spanish to quit hovering over her while she went over my tiles with grout cleaner.

Or at least, I assumed that's what _Sal de mi camino o te voy a golpear con esta escoba*_ meant.

I locked my bike to the bike rack and hoisted my laptop under my arm. There were about twenty people milling around the door, but I was looking for the woman named Brigid, who was the organizer of the event. Sadly, Iggy's description of "Redhead with big tits" didn't seem to match anyone here. There was a red-haired girl standing in front of the door, who smiled when I looked at her, but she couldn't have been more than a C-cup at best.

Nevertheless, it was now 5:58. I walked over to her. "You're Brigid?"

She looked at me strangely, although it was probably just because I was trying to verify her identity. Her breasts were probably no more than a half standard deviation from the proper size for her body weight, and were most probably enhanced by the tank she was wearing, which was a perfectly normal choice given her estimated age (29) and the heat of the evening. "How can I help you?"

At least she cut straight to the chase. My laptop was starting to slip from my sweaty hands, and I hoisted it up again. "Could you tell me where the auditorium is?"

She looked at my laptop and suddenly her eyes widened. "Oh! You must be professor Newton! I'm so glad you could make it!" She held out her hand for a shake, but I ignored it.

"Inside here, right?" I walked past her towards the school doors. "It's 5:59 now."

She smiled, a pleasant smile. "Relax. We never start these things on time. Most of our guest speakers don't even show up until about 6:20. Can I get you a coffee, or anything?"

First of all, the outside temperature of about 74 degrees combined with the heat of a coffee would almost certainly overheat my body and cause me to perspire an unhealthy amount of bodily fluids.

Secondly, if the lecture did indeed start at 6:20, that was twenty minutes of my time wasted. I could have spent that time learning more Spanish, to better integrate myself with Gloria. Instead, I would now have to make small talk with Brigid for nineteen minutes. The prospect made my hands sweat, and I set my laptop on the steps of the school.

I realized that I had forgotten to actually answer her question. "No." I elaborated, in case she had forgotten the question. "I don't drink coffee after 4:16 in the evening. Caffeine can interfere with melatonin receptors for up to four hours after its intake, so it's unwise to be offering caffeine at 7:00 p.m. unless you are planning to stay up past midnight. And unless you are a bartender, that will cause an unwanted shift in your Circadian rhythm."

I looked at Brigid, but she just said, "How's Iggy?" I recognized the question as a deviant of one of the most common of benign conversation starters, _how are you_.

I sighed. "He is well, thank you for asking."

"Really? I thought he was ill."

For some reason I felt it best to correct her misconception. "Iggy is in perfect health, although he should watch his sodium intake."

After the words left my mouth I realized that Iggy must have given Brigid the lie about being ill in order to provide her with a legitimate reason for why he was not able to come today. He must have done so to protect Brigid's feelings and make her feel like her lecture was just as important as the Lebanese girl who he was going to "go to town on" tonight instead. So I decided to keep my mouth shut.

Finally, I was able to set up my computer, which kept slithering out of my incredibly sweaty hands. I glanced at my watch, which indicated that I was about to start this lecture nineteen minutes late. I would have to speak forty-four percent faster in order to finish speaking at exactly 7:00 p.m., which was an impossible task if I wanted everyone to comprehend what I was saying.

I was going to finish late, and my entire schedule for the rest of the evening would have to adjust accordingly.

Scowling, I straightened up to find all the thirty-seven seats in the auditorium filled. I waited until everyone was looking at me, and then I began my lecture.

"Eugenic Predispositions to Pervasive Developmental Disorder," I began, pulling up my first diagram of Gene TKO, the gene hypothesized to cause PDD.

Exactly nine minutes had passed, during which I was speaking twelve percent faster than normal to make up for lost time. "And so, based on the phosphorous orientation of the amino acid valine, we can conclude that the protein made can directly correlate to the lack of serotonin release from the hypothalamus, which-"

"Excuse me."

I looked up from my notes, distracted, "Hmm?"

I looked towards Brigid for a precedent, and she had her hand raised, the international symbol for questioning.

I nodded. "Go on."

"Professor Newton, while this is all very interesting, most of us are't scientists, so you might want to get a little less technical."

Why do people do this? People have the brainpower to understand the chaos of football games but most of them don't have the interest to learn about the stuff they themselves are made of.

I continued with my presentation the way I had prepared it, feeling that at least some of the audience would be informed enough to understand.

Five minutes later, a hand went up, and I called on the twelve-year-old male promptly. "So what you're saying is that there are multiple causes, and there's no pointing fingers at any one gene because it's the aggregation of a multitude of genetic markers, right?"

I beamed at the child. "Exactly. Furthermore, environmental factors also play a role, in which-"

"So what Professor Newton is saying, I think, is that PDD is something that you're born with. And it's not your fault for having it." She looked at me for confirmation. "Right?"

"Of course it's no one's _fault_!" I said hotly. "PDD isn't a disease- it's a genetic _variant_. People with PDD have amazing spatial memory, recall, organization, focus, and rational abilities."

Now about three or four others were raising their hands. I called on a woman towards the back. "The fat- erm... overweight woman in the back?"

She frowned at me, but continued, ignoring my minor social discrepancy. "Isn't rational abilities just another word for emotional detachment?"

"Emotions can cause problems," I said simply. "Think of it like this. There's a large fire in your house, and you're outside. You can run back in and either save your baby, or your wife. You don't have time for more than one. Who do you pick?"

There was a stunned silence in which Brigid got to her feet and opened her mouth, but then a hand went up.

"Save your wife, so she'll bang you later."

"No, save the baby! He's your baby!"

"How far away is the fire department?"

"Is it a hydrogen fire? If so, then you can just smother it with a blanket, right?"

"What about the manslaughter charges?"

Just as I had thought- all the queries and ideas had come from the PDD kids. Their parents were sitting in their plastic chairs, dumbfounded. Brigid held her head in her hands.

"You see? All the rational solutions came from the kids. Everyone else couldn't even think, due to emotional ties."

Ten minutes later, the excited children were being herded out of the room by their bemused parents, who paused to look at me strangely before leaving. Apparently they were more concerned with social convention than the well-being of their own children.

Satisfied with the outcome, I packed up my laptop and passed Brigid, who rolled her head back. "I need a drink." She eyed me and grinned. "You're quite a Casanova, aren't you?"

"I am Professor Nicholas Newton," I said, wondering how in the world she could have forgotten my name already.

"Do you have time for a drink?"

I glanced at my watch. It was only 7:47, which meant I had plenty of time to bike home and take out the pot roast I had kept on the stove.

"Unfortunately, not tonight."

Brigid did a mock frown. "No flexibility in your schedule at all?"

"Sorry."

She held out her hand, and I took it after a moment's hesitation. "Well, thanks for broadening my perspective on autism, anyway. I'm going to have to go home and think long and hard about what I've just learned."

She smiled, but I stared at her confusedly. Maybe Brigid _was_ kind of slow; after all, it's not like what I just discussed was difficult to understand. But instead of voicing my concerns, I just said, "Good night."

* * *

 **Sorry for the long wait! Um... I don't really have an excuse except that I lost inspiration for this story and only recently found it. It was hiding under my bed.**

 **I'll give credit where it's due, though- the lecture scene was inspired by The Rosie Project, one of my favorite novels.**

 **Max will show up in the next chapter. There, that's your motivation to keep reading this story :)**


	3. Chapter 3

I glanced at my watch, which read 7:00 a.m, before knocking on the familiar polished mahogany door of the Jefferson family home.

There was some shuffling about inside the house before the door finally opened with a creak, and I looked down to find the youngest Jefferson child, Sigmund, standing there. His face broke into a smile upon seeing me, a good sign.

While carrying Sigmund into the house on my back, I wondered whether I could add Sigmund and his sister Lizzie to my friend count, bringing the total up to six. The thought cheered me up some, as I entered the kitchen to find Iggy and Ella in their pajamas, eating off-brand cereal.

"Jeezum, Fang, why're you here at such an unearthly hour?" Iggy rubbed his eyes, which still had fresh bags under them. "It's Saturday morning, shouldn't you be out running or counting the number of hairs on your head or something? Did Gloria steal your towels or something?"

Actually, I had had to push my morning jog back to 5:15 in the morning to be here this early. And I had also had to quite literally cut a few corners off of my run.

"Have a seat, Fang." Ella pushed out the last unoccupied stool at the kitchen countertop with a socked foot. I looked down and noticed that she was wearing her socks on the wrong feet. "We've got Lucky Charms, Pop-Tarts, and diabetes."

"Actually, diabetes is more genetic than anything else," I said, balancing myself on the rickety stool. "There's been evidence that it's linked to a gene on chromosome 20—"

"Siggie, dear, stop pouring milk on Nick's head!" Ella yelled, sliding off of her stool. It was then that I noticed the white liquid dripping off of my hair and onto my jacket, courtesy of a particular five-year-old. "Come here, you-" She wrestled Sig off of my shoulders and into her arms. "Go wake up your sister," she said, and sent him up the stairs. To me, she said, "Fang, I'm so sorry. Take off your jacket, and I'll see what I can do about it."

I removed my jacket and set it on the counter while also pulling off my glasses and wiping them clean with my handkerchief. "Maybe you should lay off the sugar." I told Iggy conversationally. "Overweight troubles are just around the corner, if you keep eating like this."

"How'd you enjoy the lecture yesterday, Fang?" Ella asked me while mopping up the spill Sig had left on the linoleum flooring.

"I found it to be an enlightening experience," I said, breaking off a piece of a chocolate-flavored Pop-Tart and putting it into my mouth. "Especially the genetics aspect of it. Did you know that PDD is actually caused by a multitude of genetic markers?"

"Did the symptoms remind you of anyone we know?" Ella asked, with a pointed look at Iggy, who rolled his eyes at me.

I was about to say not really when I was interrupted by the Jefferson's seventeen-year-old daughter Lizzie thumping down the stairs, wearing ratty jeans and an old band T-shirt. She smiled at me upon seeing me, and removed the headphones she had around her ears. "Hey, Fang." Lizzie likes me because she considers me to be "eccentric," whatever that means.

"Hey," I echoed, watching as she pulled the refrigerator door open and grabbed a tin of sweetened yogurt. No one in the Jefferson family was fat, but they were in danger of it if they kept up their sugar intake.

And then Lizzie's eyes fell on the folder sticking out of my jacket pocket, which I had so carelessly tossed on the counter. "The Enigma of Attraction? What's this?"

Iggy paused, halfway through his bowl of Lucky Charms, to look at me. I cleared my throat. Better now than never.

"I'm getting married." I announced. "I don't know to who yet. But I'm thirty-four now, and my natural instincts to have a family are increasing. My brain is releasing more oxytocin. And for that reason, I need to get going on this process."

Ella and Iggy stared at me with open mouths, and then Ella said, "Lizzie, why don't you check on what Sig's doing upstairs?"

Lizzie frowned at her mother. "But I wanna stay and help Fang!"

"Go _now_ ," Ella said pointedly, and Lizzie rolled her eyes, stuffed her headphones back in her ears, and thumped back up the stairs. A good decision, because although Lizzie was well-meaning, she did not have the expertise needed to actually help me.

Meanwhile, Iggy had sidled over to my folder and was checking out the papers inside. "Question one- when is it okay to lie and/or cheat? A: never. B: sometimes. C: always. Jeez, Fang, what kind of questionnaire is this?"

I explained the situations with both the Dean and with Brigid, and how both of them were incompatible for me. I wanted to find a girl that was perfect for me, or as close as humanly possible. I also explained that I had followed all protocol to make this a comprehensive guide, including multiple-choice questions, true/false questions, matching, Likert scales, and even trick questions.

"What d'you mean, trick questions?" Iggy asked me curiously, flipping through the folder.

"Question 42. How often do you eat liver? The correct answer is C. Sometimes. Because if you just ask blindly what a person eats, and she says 'everything,' on the next date you take her to a steakhouse and find that she's vegan." I wasn't trying to discriminate against vegetarians or people with dietary needs, but I figured that someone who ate meat, same as I, would be more convenient for me to incorporate into my life.

Iggy and Ella continued reading. "What is the correct time to arrive to an appointment? I'd say B: Ten minutes early, right?" Ella glanced at me, as though waiting for my validation.

The answer was incorrect, proving that although Ella was one of my closest friends, we were incompatible. "No. C: On time. Arriving early is a waste of time- there are so many other things you could spend time on instead."

Ella shrugged. "I dunno... it'd be nice if _some_ people came a bit early." She elbowed Iggy, who once again rolled his eyes. "Anyways, I think if a woman proclaim's she's a good cook that she's a bit full of herself. Why not just ask a question on whether or not she enjoys cooking? Even if she's horrible at it, it'll show that she's willing to improve."

I nodded and began scribbling notes down. This was exactly the kind of help I was looking for.

"These questions about height, weight, and body mass index," Iggy said, pointing to the bottom of a piece of paper. "Couldn't you just figure that out yourself?"

"Exactly. I want to make sure she's not lying. And that she can do basic math."

"I thought it would be so you could see how fit she is."

"There's a whole section on fitness," I replied, directing him to page 17.

Iggy read critically. "Nothing on sex? How long they last in bed, anything like that?"

"Because that's _all_ you think about." Ella said.

I shrugged. "I don't find that particularly important. But now that you mention it... I ought to add a question in about STDs. Just to be safe."

"Fang, stop it," Ella said. "You're being way too picky. The perfect girl for you is not going to just fall through the ceiling and land on your lap, no matter how much porn you watch. You need to broaden some of these questions, and be willing to compromise with others. Like..." She flipped through my papers, landing on page 32. "How much she drinks? You don't want her to drink at all?"

"But you drink, man," Iggy pointed out. "You've got an entire wine cupboard. You drink a _lot_."

"I'm going to fix that."

"Why do you care what her favorite flavor of ice cream is?" Ella asked me, puzzled. I took the opportunity to tell her about Lissa, otherwise known as Pistachio Girl.

We kept going for a while in this matter, until Lizzie shouted down from upstairs that her boyfriend was waiting outside to pick her up and could her parents stop being such weirdos and let her come down.

As Ella excused herself to go deal with Lizzie and her boyfriend, Iggy turned to me.

"So. What's the plan?"

"I want to advertise on regular dating sites. But I also want to try face-to-face dating."

"You're going to cast the biggest net you have, eh?" Iggy said, chuckling. "Good thing, because you have a date with Monique tomorrow. You excited?"

The date would be a perfect opportunity for me to try out my questionnaire. I nodded, although I had already forgotten Iggy's question.

* * *

Four is a good number. It's the smallest square, if you don't count 1. It's the diploid number of chromosomes in an earthworm. It's also the number of sides in a square, which incidentally was the exact same shape of the table that Iggy, Ella, and I were presently sitting at.

The fourth side was empty, because Monique, who was the girl that Ella kept smiling about, was apparently stuck at a dance-a-thon and would be a half-hour late.

When I heard this I immediately began thinking of all the time wasted; and of all the Spanish I could be learning to better communicate with Gloria. My heartbeat immediately began to increase as more adrenaline was secreted from my adrenal glands into my bloodstream. I had been studying Spanish for nearly four days now, and I was able to have a full five-minute conversation in Spanish with Gloria today. And four minutes and thirty-seven seconds of that was me talking. The situation was rather impromptu- Gloria had found a dead mouse in my bathtub while she was cleaning and had screamed bloody murder. So I had to take up the next four minutes of her time by explaining that mice were my work, and one must have snuck into my coat pocket or something, and I was terribly sorry, and did she want a raise?

Iggy interrupted my nervous twitching. "Fang, stop freaking out. Yes, Monique's way out of your league, but she's probably a really sweet girl."

Ella elbowed Iggy's thick shoulder and nearly knocked over her wineglass in the process. She laughed as her brown hair fell over one shoulder. "Ig, stop treating him like a child! Monique is definitely in your league, Fang."

I noticed the gleam in her eyes and realized that Ella really did want this date to be a success. To make her feel better, I said, "I hope so."

Ella beamed at me, so I knew that I had said the right thing.

On Ella's insistence, I had memorized my entire questionnaire. It had taken a half an hour of intense reading, but I had managed it. Ella had thought that pulling out a great big folder and asking questions from it would be more reminiscent of a job interview than a date, which would make anyone uncomfortable. She had told me to "subtly inject the questions into conversation with grace." I had told her I would try my best.

"In any case, it's _got_ to be better than that girl who mixed up genetics with hermetics," Iggy said, eyeing his empty wineglass wistfully. "Remember Kate?"

"Number 12 on Ella's list. Virgo, green, chocolate mud pie, and her favorite episode of M*A*S*H was The Interview."

Iggy wrinkled his nose. "Yuck. Anyways, Ella, this girl who you found at your yoga class just spent the entire date preaching about magical religion and how she and Fang were destined to be soul mates because of the Legend of Dora... or something or other." He exhaled. "I need more wine. Where's that damn waitress?"

Ella winced. "Sorry, Fang... I _promise_ , though, Monique is not a hermetic. She's really sweet."

Ella thinks everyone is sweet, so this statement was more or less useless to me. But I smiled at her anyway, because I did not want my friend to be mad at me.

"How _did_ you meet Monique, anyway?" Iggy chortled at his wife while motioning rather violently for the waitress to pour him another glass of wine. The waitress's long blonde hair glistened in the soft lighting of the restaurant, and I stared at it for a moment, transfixed. Then she gave me a strange look and I looked away.

"At Whole Foods," Ella said simply. "I was there buying the coconut milk that you like, and we were stuck behind a rather large lady who was buying about five hundred tins of cat food... And so we became friends."

I might have the capability to solve complex math problems in my head within seconds. I might be able to recite the base sequence of the HAR1F gene to the first thousand base pairs. But I will never be able to make friends the way Ella does.

Iggy seized his now-full glass of Moscato and raised it to his lips. "Fang, if you're not going to touch yours, I'll take it."

I glanced at my own nearly-full glass of wine. I loved wine. I had a collection of exactly one-hundred and eighty-seven bottles in a wine cabinet that I had learned how to construct by watching two Youtube videos and three trips to the Home Depot. But for some reason I felt a clenching in my stomach and was unable to drink. My fingers curled around the white linen tablecloth, and I nearly knocked my wineglass over.

"I think I have an ulcer," I said quietly, and Ella just smiled.

"Fang, you're just nervous. You have no reason to be; let me tell you that. Oh, look! Here she comes!"

Ella stood up, smiling, to receive the girl that we'd all been waiting for. I stood up as well, but my hasty decision had caused me to accidentally trip over my chair. The waitress, who was passing by, rolled her eyes at me.

So this was Monique.

My first thought: she was way out of my league.

She had dark hair that was natural, not dyed, which she had chosen to wear down rather than up. She looked to be a bit shorter than me, standing at about 5'8'', although I knew that women liked wearing heels that made them taller than they actually were. She had a lithe frame, and I estimated her weight to be around 130 pounds, which would make her BMI about—

"Monique, this is Nick," Ella said pleasantly, and I realized that I had made the social error of not introducing myself. Monique smiled at me, revealing two rows of pearly white teeth.

I debated on whether to hold out my hand or not, but then she held out her own and I gratefully picked up on the social cue for a handshake. "Nice to meet you." The words automatically spilled out of my mouth.

She smiled and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear as she sat down on the right side of the table. "You too! Sorry I'm late... the charity dance-a-thon I was at took _forever_ to end. I mean, I'm all for charity, but I _hate_ it when things don't end at the right time. Then you get late for everything else, and it just makes me itchy. I mean, there's _so_ many things I could rather be doing, like learning how to water-ski or how to mix cocktails or how to speak French."

She certainly talked a lot, but all this sounded familiar.

"What was the charity for?" Ella asked.

"PETA. Just trying to save poor animals from dying needlessly. Animal cruelty must be stopped at all costs. I'm trying to do anything I can to help. That's why I'm vegetarian. Can't stand the thought of eating poor, living animals!" She shuddered.

I opened my mouth and then closed it, trying not to point out that animals were not living when you ate them. Already Monique had failed a question on the questionnaire, despite being very pretty and very nice.

"Do you eat ice cream?" I asked her after a pause, and she grinned.

"I'm not _vegan_. I _love_ ice cream."

"What's your favorite flavor?" I asked her casually, ignoring Iggy's silent mouthing of the word _no_.

Monique tapped her chin. "I definitely like more exotic flavors, you know? So maybe, like..."

 _Don't say it. Please don't say it..._

 _"_ Pistachio."

* * *

 **...Poor Fang.**

 **I know I said Max would show up in this chapter, and while I didn't introduce her by name, she kind of did. I wonder if you guys spotted her.**

 **I'm going to end this author's note here because my laptop is running out of battery and I have like 30 seconds left before it**


	4. Chapter 4

"Fang, come out!"

There was a loud knocking on the door, which sounded like it was caused by a couple of fists. With the amount of force Ella was putting into banging on the door, I could tell that I would be safe in here for quite a while. "I'm washing my hands, Ella!" I called back. Recently I had performed an experiment in my own bathroom with multiple trials and different types of soap, and I had concluded that with the soap in my bathroom, a nice soft Dove, I would have to wash my hands for forty-seven seconds to ensure maximum cleanliness. Any longer, and I would just be wasting my time. And water.

Nevertheless, I was pleased to find that this swanky restaurant had stocked exactly the same kind of Dove soap in their bathroom. If I were to rate the restaurant based on its bathroom, I would be giving them five stars.

Ella must not have heard me, however, because she continued on banging. "Fang, I'm really sorry, okay? Will you come out now?"

I still had twenty seconds left, so I chose to not hear her voice. Besides, the door wasn't locked- she could come in here any time she wanted. The men's bathroom was quite a nice place, so I wasn't sure why she didn't want to come in here. Besides having the regular bathroom essentials, it also had a lounge area and a man standing by the door whose sole purpose was to hand out mints. Right now, he looked rather irritated by Ella's persistent banging on the door he was standing so close to. When I finished washing and drying, I declined a mint from the man and opened the door to find Ella standing there, rather breathless from all her unnecessary yelling.

"Fang, I'm sorry, okay?" she said quietly. "I didn't know Monique would throw the soup into the waitress's face like that when she found out they made their minestrone soup with chicken broth. I didn't know she would stand on her chair and preach to the entire restaurant about how meat is murder."

I cracked a smile. "In the end, she insisted on eating the Caesar salad, which was most certainly not vegan, with all the dressing she used. And the ratio of dressing to salad was much higher than the optimum amount for a healthy balance, which suggests that she doesn't care about her health as much as she claimed she did. So she was a liar as well."

"Bottom line is, I'm sorry. Okay? Also, you were right. The date was bound to be a failure."

I shook my head. "No. I have had fifty-six first dates with fifty-six different girls because of you, and this was the best one so far."

Ella stared at me. "What? Did you not _see_ what happened? Did you not see her storm out of the restaurant after being asked to leave by security? Did the soup bowl she threw hit you on the head?"

We walked back to our table, where the soup splatter on the table was still glaringly obvious against the white linen. "Ella, I'm not blind," I said patiently, sitting down in my seat. "But this date proved to me that the questionnaire is a good way to find possible wives. Monique failed every single question that I asked her."

Ella glanced towards Iggy's seat, where he was busy polishing off a 24-ounce steak. Despite my warnings of high cholesterol and sodium, Iggy had ordered the meatiest, saltiest thing on the menu, and he had refused to leave until he finished it. "What d'you think, Ig?"

He shrugged and swallowed down his last mouthful. "If Fang says he's okay with it, then I think we should leave it. Besides, the food was good, right?"

Ella sighed and leaned back in her seat. "Everyone's staring at us. I think we should just pay the bill and leave. Leave a big tip for the poor waitress- Monique ruined her hair and dress by throwing that soup."

As we exited the restaurant, I made a mental checklist of all the things I had to do in order to fix my questionnaire.

But I would keep the question about ice cream preferences. No offense to pistachio, but it was now 0 for 2.

* * *

I spent much of Monday morning avoiding Dean Winchester like the plague. I wasn't wearing my faculty ID card, because I had lost my wallet, and if she found me not wearing it she would probably give me another one of her little talks in her office. Talking to people was already harder for me than it was for most, and talking to the Dean was even harder.

I also spent the morning working on my newly updated questionnaire, when Iggy proved that he and I were incompatible by barging into my office unannounced. Even as he strode into my small office, I began editing the section on manners.

"Fangster!" Iggy announced jovially, rolling his eyes at my Monday shirt. "Wearing that god-awful shirt again?"

I looked down at my red Star Trek shirt and sighed. I had to concede that it was not one of my favorite shirts, especially because I was much more of a Star Wars fan than Star Trek. However, it had been awarded the place of my Monday shirt because of Spock's timeless quote: " _Logic is the beginning of all wisdom, not the end_." It seemed a suitable shirt to kick off a week of learning. My students certainly seemed to think so, as they constantly complimented me on my clothing.

"I wear this shirt every Monday," I said, saving the document on my laptop and closing it. "You know why I have a set outfit for every day of the week. Fewer decisions means less energy wasted on menial tasks, which is more mental energy I can devote to my research and teaching. Also, the average man spends seven minutes and twenty-three seconds deciding what to wear each day. _I_ spend that extra time in the shower."

Iggy put a finger to his whiskered chin. "Hmm... seven extra minutes a day to jack off in the shower... You might have a point there, Fang." He grinned. "Ella dresses me, so I don't really have that problem. If it wasn't for her, I'd probably be wearing swim trunks and a pair of galoshes right now."

I wanted to point out that Iggy had worn exactly that the last time he had had one beer too many and had started dancing on the wooden tables at our last faculty party. But I just said, "I've got a class to teach in fifteen minutes."

"And I'm sure you can deal with being a bit late," Iggy said, proving again that we were incompatible as partners, although he was my closest friend. "I have a serious question for you."

I glanced at my watch. It took me seven minutes to walk over to the North campus, where my lecture was scheduled, and another three minutes to pack everything into my bag. Iggy had five minutes. "What is it?"

Iggy leaned forward. "It's Hillary."

I blinked for a moment, unsure who he was talking about. "Hillary who?"

"The new Biology T.A. The one that's..." He cupped his hands and held them up to his pectoral region. "I think _more_ than double D's, but I'd have to get up close and personal to find out."

"What about her?" I asked, stacking my papers in a neat, albeit out-of-order, pile.

"She wants to have dinner with me. Tonight. Tonight's mine and Ella's special night. You remember that on the first Monday of every month we rent Terminator, get Chinese takeout, and mime explosions, right?"

I did indeed know this, so I nodded.

Iggy pushed his red hair out of his equally red face. "Goddammit, Fang, I can't say no to Hillary. She's... she's..." He mimed an action that I found no words to describe, but it was oddly titillating. "You gotta help me out. Say no to her for me. Because I swear, if she comes up to me and asks, I won't be able to say no. And I don't really feel like dying at the hands of an angry wife tonight."

"What does she look like?" I asked, because so far all I knew about Hillary was that she had big breasts. And Iggy's estimation of breast size was not something that was not accurate, as shown by Brigid Dwyer. Brigid Dwyer, who had incidentally called me this morning. I let the call go to voicemail, and she had asked me again about getting drinks sometime. That in itself irked me, because _sometime_ could mean anywhere from five minutes from now to five _years_ from now. People who wasted my time being unspecific were definitely incompatible with me.

"I dunno... she's blonde? Or maybe brunette? To be honest, I didn't really notice anything other than her double E's. And I still reckon you should put that in your questionnaire." Iggy grinned, and I rolled my eyes.

"I'll try," I said, a noncommittal answer that would leave Iggy happy with me and would also ensure that he wouldn't get angry when I failed to locate Blond-or-Brunette Hillary.

Iggy nodded at me and stood up, his head nearly hitting the ceiling of my office. "Also, I have a message from Ella. She said that since her method of picking girls for you hasn't seemed to be working, I now have that job." He winked at me. "And I know some _lovely_ ladies."

Before I could protest, Iggy was out the door. He moved surprisingly fast for someone so big, and I had to resign myself to the fact that I couldn't be late for my lecture.

* * *

Two hours and thirteen minutes after my interaction with Iggy in my office, I was back in it, weighing student papers. This might seem like malpractice to some people, but I found it an efficient way to see how good a student's paper was without actually reading it. Whether they included a table of contents or not, whether they included a conclusion; all those things took up paper, and paper took up mass.

But then a knock came on the door and I hid the scales underneath my desk before I called, "Come in." _And thanks for knocking_.

I looked up to see a woman I did not recognize standing in the doorway. She looked to be about twenty-eight, and her BMI looked to be around twenty, which was a good weight for her age. She shuffled her feet, as though she was not sure of being here. But then her blonde hair glinted in the late morning sun and I remembered my noncommittal grunt to Iggy.

"Are you Blonde-or-Brunette Hillary?" I asked her, and she looked confused.

"No."

Well, then, that meant I couldn't tell this girl not to have sex with Iggy. And she definitely looked like his type: tall, athletic, and her skin tone and muscle mass were consistent with a level of continuous exercise.

She stepped further into the room, so that more of her face was illuminated from the ray of sunlight floating in through the window that I had forgotten to close. "Are you Professor Newton?"

This was not a particularly erudite question, because my name was on the plaque adorning my office door. But to remain congenial I affirmed her guess. "Yes."

If Iggy had sent this girl, he had amazing efficiency, and he had done it well. From what I could tell, she was passing the questionnaire. I did not find any sign of makeup, and her physique suggested that she did exercise regularly. Her blonde hair was tied back, and she wore a black T-shirt with some obscure band name on it, blue jeans that were slashed either purposely or accidentally, and clunky black boots.

It was lucky that Ella had made me delete the question about piercings because she had three of them- two on her ears, and a tiny dot in her nose.

Her clothing made me think that she was not an academic or anything even remotely close to it, especially since her T-shirt had many vulgar words printed on it. I guessed that she had some sort of casual job that was free from rules about attire.

Then I realized that neither of us had spoken for quite a while, and just as I opened my mouth, she opened hers and beat me to the punch. "You were at the restaurant last night? With the... rowdy girl and the couple that fought over breadsticks?"

It was a statement posed as a question, and as she spoke, I realized that I _did_ recognize this girl. But without a waitress's uniform and her hair in a tight bun, she looked almost completely different. "You were the waitress." I then remembered the soup incident, and wondered whether she had come here for an apology. In any case, she deserved one. "I'm sorry for what happened last night."

The girl scoffed and sat down on the armchair facing my desk, crossing her legs. "You're sorry, huh? It took me _three_ showers to get that gunk out of my hair. And I'm still finding peas in it." She ran a hand through her tangled blonde hair to prove her point.

"Why don't you use coconut oil?" I asked her, remembering what Gloria used to get the hair out of my bathtub. "It's less damaging than shampoo, because it's natural. And I'm sure the rest of the gunk will slide right out."

"Coconut oil, huh? Okay. Thanks, Oprah." She grinned at me, but I stared at her confusedly.

"My name isn't Oprah, it's -"

"Nicholas Newton. Yeah, I know. I checked the bill from last night. You and your friends tip a _lot._ You planning on going back to that restaurant any time soon?" She smiled again, and this time I smiled back.

"So, what brings you here?" I asked, before the silence could stretch too long.

She pulled out a square of black leather from her pocket. "You left your wallet there last night. Restaurant policy is to keep it in the lost and found for forty-eight hours and then throw it out, but I opened it and found your faculty ID..." She bit back a laugh. "And I just had to find you and give it back in person."

I took my wallet from her and pulled out my ID. We both stared at it for a moment. I had to agree that it was not one of my best pictures. I had only gotten three hours of sleep the night before, having had to do extensive research in the lab to reach a deadline. As a result, there was also mice poop clearly visible against my dark hair, and instead of smiling I had given the camera a light grimace.

"You look better in person," the girl offered helpfully, and I took it as a compliment.

"Thanks."

"Yeah, I like your shirt," she told me, grinning. "But although I appreciate Spock's wisdom, I'm more of a Yoda kind of gal."

"You... you like Star Wars?" I glanced at her, not wanting to believe it.

She shrugged. "You kidding? I wanted to be Han Solo so bad, I dressed up as him for three years in a row. Including last Halloween." She crossed her eyes, and I grinned nervously because I loved the character of Han Solo, too.

Before I could stop myself I blurted out the next question. "Do you want to have dinner tonight?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Tonight? With you?"

Yes, that was what I had just said, and there was no need to repeat it because it was easy enough to comprehend. "Yes."

She smiled and nodded. "Sure, Nick Newton. How about Crusty's at ten?"

"Okay," I said, wondering what Crusty's was.

She raised her eyebrows even higher, so that they were in danger of disappearing into her hairline. "You want to have dinner at a gay bar at ten on a school night."

Crusty's was a gay bar. "Okay." I said again, shrugging. Ella was always telling me to broaden my horizons, anyway.

The girl's face broke into a real smile. "Fine. I'll meet you there. They _don't_ sell minestrone soup, by the way."

"Thank God," I said, and she seemed mollified. As she stood up to leave, I noticed that while she knew my name, I didn't know hers. "What's your name?" I asked her, because it seemed a terrible social error on my part to have such a pleasant conversation and not even know my conversation partner's name.

She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind an ear. "Maxine Reine. But people I like call me Max."

"So... erm... what should _I_ call you?" I asked her, unsure whether she liked me or not. We had only known each other for fifteen minutes, after all, and while I was still unsure of my feelings toward her (I hadn't had a chance to pull out the questionnaire yet), she did seem to be a very pleasant person.

She smiled, almost a sinister smile. In a faux deep voice she said, "Call me Vader. Darth Vader."

Then she left, the door closing behind her.

I guess I had a date tonight.

* * *

 **All's well that works out well... hopefully.**

 **And yay Max has arrived! Shout-out to respectthepouch for correctly observing that she was the waitress! This chapter was my favorite one to write so far :) **


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as Maxine Reine left my office I called Iggy through his extension on the interdepartmental telephone system to let him know what I was doing.

"What's her name?"

"Maxine," I said. "But people who she likes call her Max."

Iggy scoffed over the phone. Either that or he sneezed rather violently. "She sounds like one of those girls with short brown hair, chewing gum and carrying a baseball mitt at all times."

I shook my head, although I knew he couldn't see me over the phone. "Maxine does not have a baseball mitt. And her hair is long and blonde."

"Still. Make sure her idol isn't Rhonda Rousey or something. And _please_ don't be weird, for the love of God. Most of your dates seem to end in awkward handshakes while the girl tries not to run in the opposite direction."

"How do I end the date, then?"

"All you have to say is, 'That was fun. How about dinner again sometime?'"

"That was fun. How about dinner again sometime?" I asked flatly, and Iggy sighed.

"You sound like a robot. But if this girl agreed to go out with you, then maybe she's into that. Where are you taking her?"

"Crusty's."

Iggy burst into laughter. "Oh man. Oh, _man_. A gay bar? Well, that's better than where I took Ella for our 15th anniversary. We both forgot it was our anniversary, and we ended up at Chili's during happy hour. Happy hour for cheese fries, not alcohol."

"Cheese fries?"

"Fang. It's not hard. Just compliment her appearance. Say you like her earrings- that always turns Ella on, for some reason. You should pay for the meal, but in the age of new wave feminism, make her feel like she could have paid if she wanted to. And do _not_ mention sex on the first date." Iggy paused for a second, and then said, "I have to go. Deandra's calling me. But good luck, man. Tell me how it goes."

* * *

Not wanting to be late, I arrived at Crusty's at exactly 9:59 in the evening, but one thing I had not anticipated was the large line that started at the entrance and wound itself down the sidewalk and around the corner. At the head of the line was a large, burly man, who was dressed in all black and was marking people off of a list.

I approached the large man at the head of the line, ignoring the jeers of the people in the line behind me. "Hello. My name is Professor Newton and I would like to go in."

Clipboard Man looked me up and down, and I pulled my Flex-Fit rain jacket tighter over my Monday t-shirt. It was raining quite heavily, and the large man was claiming the entirety of the small awning underneath the entrance to the bar, leaving everyone else in the line to stand in the rain. "You think I'm just going to let you in?" He laughed, but it wasn't a nice laugh, like Ella's laugh whenever I told her she ought to work out more. It sounded mocking. "Go back to the end of the line."

I tried appealing to the man's better nature. "Please. I have a date at ten."

"You can have a date with me instead, handsome." I turned around to see who the speaker was, and it turned out to be a blond-haired man in a strikingly neon pink tank top. He winked at me, and I shook my head.

"No thank you. I just want to go inside." I turned back to the man with the clipboard. "How do I get in?"

"If you want to get in _me_ , that can be arranged." The same man in the neon tank top said, now biting his lip.

The whole situation was very confusing, and all in all, I was very relieved when I saw a familiar blonde head barreling down the sidewalk at speeds that should have not been possible in those very uncomfortable shoes she was wearing. "Professor Newton! Nick! What're you doing?"

"You're late," I said. "There's a social problem. This man won't let me into the bar."

Maxine crossed her arms and rolled her eyes at the man with the clipboard. "C'mon, Freddie. Let us in."

He raised his eyebrows. "You know this guy?" His surprised expression suggested that Maxine did not generally go on dates with men in glasses and waterproof rain jackets.

"Yeah," Maxine said, taking my hand in hers. "He's my date. Now let us in the fucking bar or I'll tell DaQuan that you cheated on him with that college student during Twinkie Tuesday."

His eyes widened, and he finally stepped aside to let us in. "Fine. But you had better take that secret with you to your grave."

Maxine shrugged. "Sure, along with the pictures that I have on my phone... You take care of yourself, Freddie."

I had not noticed that she was still grasping my hand, but then she pulled me into the bar and I followed. Despite there being quite a large line on the street, the inside of the bar was quite empty, and Maxine took off her jacket and set it on an empty table. I could finally see her properly. She had traded her ripped t-shirt and jeans for a simple black dress, a gold chain around her neck, and her long blonde hair tied up and draped over one shoulder. Al in all, the effect was very pleasant, and she grinned at my gaze. "Had fun out there, did you?"

"How did you know Clipboard Man?"

She smirked at my description of him, even though it was a tad less comical than Large Man, which was an equally apt phrase to describe him. "Aw, Freddie's always been a bit of a prick. He thinks he's better than everyone else because he's a bouncer at a gay bar and he drives a used Ford Focus. When I worked here I thought he was trying to hit on me, but it turns out he's gay and just loves to talk about himself. Like everyone else here."

"You worked here? Is that why you selected this place?"

Maxine shrugged. "They have really good onion rings. But they make your breath smell like dried fish farts." She laughed, and I returned a smile which, according to the reflection on the shiny table, actually looked more like a genuine smile than a grimace.

I remembered Iggy's words to compliment her appearance, and so to further the conversation I told her that she looked quite pleasant.

Maxine smiled. "Thanks. So do you. I guess that's why those two guys at the bar have been eyeing you for the past five minutes."

I turned around to see where she was looking, and sure enough, a man with green hair and a man wearing a leather jacket over a bare chest winked and waved at me. Following the social cue, I waved back, and Maxine giggled. "Don't encourage them! They're like leeches! They feed off of positive energy." She suddenly gave me a curious glance. "You're not gay, are you?"

I explained to her that my parents and friends thought I was for a few years back in high school, but I proved them wrong by taking the fattest girl in the senior class to prom. I debated whether or not to tell her about Ella's 57 matches for me, but decided against it. "So, no. I am not attracted to men."

"Better tell _him_ that," Maxine jerked her thumb behind me, where Leather Jacket Man was walking up towards our table.

Up close, he smelled like very strong perfume, like the samples that arrive in sporting magazines. In fact, it was so strong that my eyes began to water, and as I covered my mouth in my sleeve to cough, he began talking to Maxine.

"Hey, baby. You look like someone I'd like to meet." His coiffed brown hair glinted in the dim lights of the bar, and he casually leaned on the table, showing off his entire torso region, which indicated that he exercised regularly.

Maxine wrinkled her nose. "You look like someone I'd like to flip off."

He just smiled. "Babe, you can flip me off anytime."

Now she looked confused. "This is a gay bar; shouldn't you be hitting on him?" She gestured towards me, and I stared at her, unsure of what was going on.

Leather Jacket Man smirked at me and leaned towards Maxine, blocking most of her face from my sight. "I'm bisexual, ever heard of that, sweetheart?"

Maxine flushed red, and I willed her to keep her head although she looked angry enough to flip the table over. "Well, _I'm_ asexual, so back the hell off."

He didn't listen, and instead, put a hand on Maxine's shoulder. "Aww, you playin' hard to get?"

I stood up, thinking it was high time to intervene. I put my own hand on Leather Jacket Man's shoulder, and he spun around to face me. "She made it clear she's not interested in meeting you," I said quietly. "So why _don't_ you back the hell off?"

Leather Jacket Man looked rather irritated, as though I was interrupting something important. "You wanna fight me, old man?"

Actually, I had spotted his ID while he was flashing it at the bartender, and he was born in 1983. He was only three years younger than me. And fighting was generally not accepted in public places, so I shook my head. "No. But I want you to respect Maxine and stop talking to her." New age feminism. I was following another one of Iggy's suggestions.

A crowd was slowly gathering around our table, and I could hear some of the murmurs from the people standing around us.

"Are they gonna fight?"

"That would be _so_ hot!"

"Listen, you fucking nerd. This is none of your business." Leather Jacket spat at me, and I shrugged.

"It appears the crowd wants us to fight," I said, to some cheers. "Since that is not socially acceptable, I think we should just-"

I was not able to finish my sentence. Leather Jacket Man had lunged at me and attempted to knock me to the ground, among screams from Maxine and gasps from the crowd. I responded automatically by seizing him by the pressure point on his back and giving him a low-impact throw. Unfortunately, my glasses slid off of my nose and onto the ground during the fight.

Leather Jacket Man landed rather heavily, knocking over a table in the process. It seemed that he, unlike me, had not been trained in martial arts, and therefore did not know how to fall properly. He sat up, groaning, and I tensed up, waiting for him to charge at me again. However, he did not. Instead, he staggered to his feet, glared at me, and limped off towards the exit.

The crowd around me began cheering, and Maxine looked at me, eyes wide, hands covering her mouth. "What the hell just happened?"

I pointed to the bridge of my nose, where my glasses had sat until three minutes ago. "I lost my glasses."

Maxine got down on all fours and helped me look for them, until both of us heard a small cracking noise. "Oh, fuck." She pulled my glasses from under her knee. One of the lenses was now broken. "I guess I found them."

I sat back in my chair, blinking through the crack. "I have a spare at home." I said, letting her know that it was okay.

"Y'know, you don't look too buff, if you don't mind me saying. But somehow you just flipped that guy over like he was a burnt patty on the grill. How'd you do that?"

I shrugged and pointed to my glasses, which were freshly cracked. Gazing at her through cracked glasses brought me back to elementary school days.

Maxine smirked. "Problems of being a nerd, huh? I can understand. People used to bully me in grade school. That's why I took up running. If they can't catch you, they can't bully you. Wish I had done it your way, though. Running's not really a viable life skill."

I found it hard to believe that someone like her would ever get bullied, and I told her so.

Maxine just laughed. "Sure. I'm hot _now_ , but you really think I looked like this when I was eight? Wait- I think I might have a picture." And she pulled out her phone and began scrolling on it. I waited patiently until she looked up triumphantly, having found a picture. As she passed her phone to me, my mouth fell open. The girl in the picture was sitting for a yearbook photo. She had large pustules all over her forehead and cheeks, large braces that had bits of food stuck in them, and her brown hair- yes, brown- was extremely short, reaching only until her ears.

But Iggy had told me to always compliment a woman's appearance. Even though lying was a social mistake, I found myself uttering the words, "I like your haircut."

She rolled her eyes. "Let me guess. Someone told you to always compliment a girl on how she looks, right? That's cute. And I thought gentlemen were dead."

"They're not dead. They're in hibernation, waiting for the age of jean shorts to end."

"And cheeseburgers in vending machines." Maxine said. "As if America needs _more_ obesity for a dollar."

"See-through shirts," I said, gesturing to a man wearing one who was gyrating against a pole. "Why do they exist? It's a waste of fabric, and it's not covering anything."

Maxine giggled. "Red Starbursts, because those are from _hell."_

 _"_ Mosquitoes. Rates of malaria are growing exponentially in third world countries-"

"-and all anyone cares about is posting duck faces on Instagram," Maxine finished. "God. We're more alike than I thought."

There was a silence following her sentence, but my cranium was buzzing with thoughts. So far, I had restrained myself from pulling out the questionnaire, because I was too afraid to see how incompatible Maxine would be with me. I was growing to enjoy her company, even if she worked at a restaurant and wore shirts with vulgar words on them. I didn't want the questionnaire to ruin it for me.

"You like running?" I asked her, remembering what she said about bullies earlier. It would be nice to have a running companion in the mornings. I was pushing to run a fifteen-minute 5k, and I wondered whether Maxine would be up to the challenge.

"Like? I was my high school's district track champion, and that translated into a full-ride scholarship at Tulane. Running was my life."

"Was?" I prodded.

Maxine sighed, and then put her high-heeled foot on the table. This was certainly a social anomaly, as no one else was doing it, but she ignored my stare. "I dislocated my knee, and haven't been able to run as fast or as far since. One nasty fall was all it took."

I looked at the scar on her kneecap, and wondered how much that would hurt. "That must've hurt."

"Eh. Shit happens. Isn't that life?" She grinned at me, and then her eyes widened. "And some shit's about to happen right now."

I turned around once more to where her gaze was pointed, and saw an even larger man than Clipboard Man and Leather Jacket Man combined marching toward us, a not-so-friendly look on his large face.

"That's Hector," Maxine whispered. "He's the manager. I don't think he liked your little judo-throw stunt."

I opened my mouth to tell her that it wasn't judo, it was Tai Chi. Judo was a completely different sect of martial arts. But before I could correct her misconception, the man called Hector was at our table. "Maxine Reine. I should've known you'd cause trouble. And you brought a friend." He glared at both of us as though he wanted us to explain why there was a broken table lying on the ground.

I opened my mouth once again to explain the situation, but strangely, I found that no words would come out no matter how hard I tried. Maxine saw my problem and rushed to explain. "There was this real douche, Hector, and he just wouldn't quit hitting on me. So Professor Newton- I mean Nick- decided to hit on _him_."

"Professor, eh?" Hector said, crossing his arms. "I thought you people were supposed to be smart. No bar fighting- it's one of the main rules. Especially in a gay bar."

"Please, Hector," Maxine said, because I _still_ was not able to speak. My face had grown very red, as the reflection on the back of the table once again indicated. "He was just being a gentleman." And she smiled brightly at him.

In the end, Hector agreed not to press charges if Maxine and I would leave immediately. As we walked out onto the street, she turned to me.

"Man. I didn't even get to order the onion rings."

My stomach responded in place of my mouth by rumbling loudly, and Maxine grinned. In my defense, I had skipped dinner in anticipation of the date, which was a poor decision my part, even though it had freed up one hour and thirty-seven minutes in the evening that I would usually have spent cooking. I had used that time to listen to a series of podcasts on the quantum physics of meteor showers, so that in case I ever saw the physics professor Sam Barrett at the university, he and I would have something to talk about. "We could go somewhere else," I suggested.

Maxine shook her head. "I really wish I could, but it's getting late and I have to get to work early tomorrow. Gotta get that paycheck!" She lightly punched me in the arm. "You still owe me dinner, though. You free tomorrow evening?"

"Tomorrow?"

"Yeah. Tuesday. We should meet at your place, though. Mine's kind of a mess. My roommate is a rat." She grinned. "I'm kidding. I think it's actually a family of rats. In any case, I don't want you to get rabies."

"What time?"

Maxine shrugged. "I get off work at eight, so around eight-thirty?"

"Okay."

She smiled. "Great. I'll bring the cheapest wine I can find at the supermarket."

I told her that would not be necessary. "I have a wine collection with exactly 187 bottles in it." More accurately, 186 and a half, since Gloria and I had bonded earlier over Mexican soap operas and a glass of merlot. I had been learning Spanish for a week now, and Gloria told me that my Español was better than that of her sixteen-year-old American-born grandson, who was struggling with _por_ vs _para_ in school. I mentioned Iggy's daughter Lizzie, who had earned an A in Spanish 4 at her school and was always looking for ways to make more shopping money. Tutoring would also get Lizzie away from her boyfriend more, something Ella in particular would appreciate.

"Wow. Practically a supermarket right there. Okay, so I'll bring just my sunny attitude to your house at eight-thirty, then. Heads-up though: I am _shit_ at cooking. I burn water. Just saying."

"That's okay," I heard myself saying, even though cooking was one of the important questions on the questionnaire. And if she really was as bad at cooking as she claimed to be, then her ineptitude would certainly slow down the cooking process.

I gave her my address, and she gave me her phone number which she "didn't hand out to just anyone," so I had to feel extra special.

As I waved goodbye and watched her walk down the street, I realized I hadn't asked her what her dietary preferences were. Just to be safe, I would not purchase any ice cream.

* * *

 **I updated within a week! New personal record!**

 **Question of the chapter: Who's your favorite character so far? I know most of the characters have been from canon, but which one is your favorite in this particular story? Just wondering :)**


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning I found a parcel waiting for me as I exited my home to bike to the university.

Truthfully, I did not find it so much as I tripped over it and almost landed headfirst in the petunia bushes that Gloria had painstakingly planted outside. It took my fast reflexes to keep me from falling over.

The mailman looked at me strangely, and I suppose grabbing someone one barely knows by his collarbone is not a social norm many people follow, but it was the only thing I had to hold to keep from doing a complete faceplant.

"Uh, here's your mail," he muttered, handing me a few envelopes, and I took the stack of letters from him.

As he power-walked away from me, I set my stack of mail inside the house and picked up the package. It was small, sturdy, and judging by its mass, was approximately 550 grams.

I was already four minutes late in my schedule. I decided to take the package with me and open it in my office, where there would hopefully be no packages to trip over and no skinny mailmen to grab.

I biked 12% faster to get to the university on time. "On time," meaning before the Dean got there. She always arrived at 8:00 a.m. sharp, and even though I generally did not have any morning lectures, I liked to get there before her so I could avoid her early-morning grumpiness. The Dean was not what you would call a morning person. Instead, she was downright formidable, with her scalding cup of coffee that could easily be used as a projectile against irritating people, and most of the professors were intelligent enough to avoid her at all costs before ten in the morning.

In my office, I ignored the stack of student test papers waiting for me, and instead opened the package. I pulled out a mug, a black mug with a picture on it of a black-haired girl with a monkey resting comfortably in her hair. Inside the package was a note that read, "Happy birthday Nicky! I sent this two days before the actual day but I _am_ in Belize at the moment so I have no idea when it'll reach you. But congrats on turning thirty-five! Now you can finally run for president! Love, Becky. P.S. The monkey in my hair's name is named James Watson."

I smiled at the note. My younger sister was one of my friends, and she had been in the Peace Corps for ten years now. I was glad that she had remembered my birthday, because it had been eight days ago and I had forgotten myself. A more important problem had arisen on that day, in the form of a water leak in my bathroom.

I heard a knock on my office door, and put the mug back in the box. "Come in," I called, setting the package on the ground.

Iggy came in. "Fang, mate, say you love me."

"But I don't love you. I like you a lot, because you are my friend, but I don't _love_ you."

Iggy rolled his eyes. "Well, you're gonna love me after what I've done for you. Move over and pull up the internet." He grabbed my laptop and started typing vigorously. "This is it."

I glanced at what he was showing me, confused. "What?"

"It's a dating profile! I signed you up myself, and you've already got thirty-three responses. Girls seem to love a nerdy intellectual who can quote "The Empire Strikes Back" _almost_ perfectly."

"Vader's lines are really hard to memorize," I defended myself.

"Point is, you've got thirty-three girls here that want to meet you. And that's not all. I've signed you up for this group dating thing called Tricks for Six, and this speed-dating thing at the college bar down the street that's tonight, and-"

"Iggy," I said, gently interrupting him. "You did all this for me?"

Iggy blinked. "Well, yeah! You don't want to spend _another_ Thanksgiving eating alone, do you?"

"I eat with _you_ guys," I pointed out. "Your mother actually really likes me."

Iggy rolled his eyes. "Please. If I have to hear her gushing _one more time_ about that nice young man who fixed her flat tire and also wanted to talk about Gershwin with her for ten hours straight... But she could have also been talking about Cary Elwes. She met him once, you know."

"I know," I said, having heard Iggy's mother's story about meeting him approximately sixteen times. "But Iggy, I'm afraid I'll have to cancel on the speed-dating thing."

He just laughed. "Fang, I know you have a date with memorizing the periodic table of the elements or whatever, but this is about your _future_ , not about the number of minerals you can recite in thirty seconds."

"I already memorized the periodic table," I said airily. "Professor Baldwin was very impressed that I even got the _unun_ ones correct. I've moved on to podcasts about astrophysics so that I can talk to Professor Barrett."

"Well then, why aren't you free tonight?" Iggy demanded.

For some reason, I felt it hard to tell the truth without blushing, so I mumbled. "I have a date."

Iggy's extra-sensitive ears picked up almost immediately. "You have a _what_?"

"A date," I mumbled again, trying not to turn red. Blushing is an interesting phenomenon. The tiny capillaries just beneath the surface of the skin widen slightly based on neural signals from the brain. These neural signals are triggered by embarrassment, anger, or love. I had no idea why I was blushing, because I wasn't feeling particularly angry, and I certainly wasn't in _love_.

But was I embarrassed?

Iggy looked at me curiously. "Another date? With who?"

The capillaries in my face continued to widen. "Maxine."

"Bloody heck. The same girl from yesterday? She wants to go on another date with you?" It wasn't that Iggy was being rude with his questions. In fact, his questions were well-deserved, considering that I usually did not have second dates, and almost certainly not so soon after the first. So I explained everything that had happened yesterday, and in the end, Iggy just said, "I want to meet this girl."

"You've seen her. She was the waitress at the restaurant we were at on Sunday."

Iggy shook his thinning red hair. "No. I want to see her in person. What time is she meeting you?"

"Iggy, you can't come," I said, thinking that I had not purchased enough lobster last night for three people. Four, if I was to count Ella, and since Ella and Iggy were almost attached at the hip when it came to me, that was probably the case. "You... you can't come."

"You really don't want me there, huh?" Iggy said after a pause, grinning. "Fine. You win. But my evening's open." He stroked his whiskered chin thoughtfully. "Maybe I should call Hilary up..."

* * *

"How come you have no pictures or posters on your walls?"

I stood in the middle of my tidy but small home, watching as Maxine walked around, examining my CD collection of classical music, the fencing sword I had bought at a flea market, and the large bookshelf in which I had organized every title by the author's height. Needless to say, Stephen King was closer to the top of the bookshelf. Maxine frowned at my collection of books.

"Where's Harry Potter?"

I told her I had never read those books, despite their popularity with many of the professors at work, including the Dean herself. Maxine's mouth turned into a perfect O.

"You're fucking kidding! You've _never_ read any of the Harry Potter books?" Maxine stared at me as though I had announced I was from a different planet. It occured to me that reading Harry Potter might be on _her_ questionnaire, and I wondered if my not having read the series would make us any less compatible in her eyes. I decided to ask her.

"Does that bother you?"

"Bother me? Professor Nicholas Newton, you have not _lived._ "

The living area in my home is visible from the kitchen, and I figured it was high time to start dinner. Maxine had not arrived until 8:37, although we had agreed on 8:30. This time, she blamed her un-punctuality on a cop that was giving her a ticket as she pulled out of work.

However, her lack of cooking ability combined with her lateness was already two faults on the questionnaire. I was almost starting to wonder if there was a point in continuing on with the evening, but then she came and sat at one of the barstools that Ella had insisted I purchase. Maxine ran her hands along my kitchen countertop. "Ooh, fancy granite." She leaned her chin on her hands and winked at me. "You running a little bar here, Professor?"

I wondered why she insisted on calling me _professor_ when she was not one of my students and I was not actively teaching at the moment. But I decided not to question it. "I can mix some drinks, but I am not bartender-certified."

"Well. That's a shame. So tell me, why don't you decorate your walls?" She gestured to my blank, tan-colored walls that the woman at Home Depot had said would make the room look airy and bright. "My apartment's covered with pictures, posters, a lock of hair that I bought at an auction that was once Billy Joel's... I'm kidding!" She grinned. "But you need to give your room some personality!"

"Why bother?" I asked, beginning to chop onions. "The human brain is wired to notice only that which is different in its environment. What is the point of spending hundreds of dollars on art and posters if I'm just going to ignore it in a few days? If I want to see art, I can go to the museum. They have much higher quality paintings then the kind you could find for your home, and the total expenditure over time is much less than the cost of the customary fireplace painting."

"I never thought of it that way," Maxine said casually, sliding off the stool and walking around the counter to where I was now sliding the finely chopped onions into a bowl. "Wish I had known that _before_ I spent my hard-earned money on a signed Journey poster." She continued walking, examining the contents of my fridge, now. "Why are you growing grass in your fridge?"

"It's wheatgrass. I use it in oatmeal or in morning smoothies. It's very good for strengthening your digestive system."

Maxine snorted. "Usually I just have a packet of M&Ms and a coffee from Starbucks br breakfast."

Then she opened the freezer, saw the lobster inside, and screamed.

I almost dropped the bowl of onions, but refrained from doing so. "What? What?"

Maxine pointed to the lobster inside. "It... _moved_! It's still _alive_?"

I told her that even if they were still alive, the freezer method was a very efficient method for killing, and they felt almost no pain. Maxine still didn't look convinced, and shuddered when I opened the freezer door to check on them.

"I work at a fancy-schmancy restaurant, where we serve hundreds of lobsters a week, but I still can't bear the thought of killing those poor animals..."

I was sensing a rather Monique-ish conversation trend here, and decided to change the subject. "Can you hand me some spices?"

Maxine walked over to the wooden cupboards and opened it, her eyes widening when she saw how everything was organized alphabetically to the day. "What the hell's paprika? And cumin? And _mirchi masala_? Literally all I know are salt and pepper. And cinnamon, I guess. You want the Wednesday ingredients?"

"Wednesday is lobster day," I said, and she handed me the little tray which included green cardamom and mesquite flour.

"You want me to boil potatoes or something? I feel weird, hanging 'round here watching you chop like you're an Iron Chef."

I told her there were no potatoes in today's dish, and her brows furrowed slightly.

"Huh. I've been eating dinner at Wendy's and McDonald's for so long that it doesn't _feel_ like dinner without fried potatoes. Okay, I guess I'll put on music, or something." Maxine waltzed over to my CD collection, and examined my sets. "You must really like old dead guys. Haydn, Gershwin, Wagner, Bach..." She mimed yawning. "Mind if I plug in the aux cord?"

I shrugged, my hands full with different spices. "Go ahead."

While the lobsters died, Maxine began blaring loud rock music. At least, it _sounded_ like rock. It was so loud that the ground was shaking underneath my feet, but Maxine seemed to be enjoying it. She was swaying to the beat, grinning slightly at my expression. "You've never heard Death Cab for Cutie?"

"I wasn't aware that was music."

Maxine laughed and turned the volume down, so the piercing electric guitar became more of a gentle hum in the background. "You know, my dad used to say 'It's not music unless there's at least one pounding guitar riff.' At least, that's what my uncle told me he used to say." She shrugged. "But, you know, to each his own."

She moved again from the CD shelf to my wine cabinet. I was beginning to get the feeling that Maxine did not like to stay still, even for a moment. "Chardonnay? For a Tuesday?"

I realized she was looking at the weekly wine section, and I shrugged. "Believe it or not, wine actually has very high nutritional levels when drunk in moderation."

"Oh, you don't need to give me a reason to be an alcoholic," Maxine said, smirking. "So when're we gonna pop the top off of one of these babies?" She gazed at my rows and rows of carefully stacked bottles. "My alcohol collection just consists of an old pinot noir my auntie gave me for Christmas four years ago and a six-pack of Coors Lite."

I told her that because of lobster's naturally high nutritional value, there would be no need for the excess caloric intake of wine. "I usually drink lemon water instead."

"Fuck lemon water."

She had a point.

"Hey. So you make this same thing every Wednesday?"

"Yes."

Maxine glanced at me and nodded. "Okay. Like, is this a system like the Atkins diet or are you just really OCD?"

As I pulled the now-dead lobster from the fridge, I explained to her why the Newton dinner plan was so useful. Less waste, less money spent, and less cognitive load. I had made lobster and French-style salad for so long that I could do it with my eyes closed. It was not bragging- after making it every week for three years, I did not even need to look at what I was doing.

As I put the finishing touches on dinner, I suggested that Maxine set the table. Not because I wanted her to do work, but because I felt like she would be happier setting cups and plates out than watching me crack the lobster's femur bones.

She had created a makeshift dining table in the middle of my living room by setting the giant chess board Iggy had given to me for Christmas ten years ago on top of two large boxes that came from the microscope set I had ordered a while back. For chairs, Maxine used sofa cushions.

"You didn't have a table for me to set, so I improvised."

I smiled. "It's perfect." Indeed I was impressed at her innovative skills. Perhaps she actually was of a higher intellect than I gave her credit for.

I skilfully maneuvered to the makeshift table and set down our dinner. Maxine stared at it. "You're sure it's dead, right?"

"I broiled it in hundred-degree water for twelve minutes, so most definitely yes."

She smirked at the plates, which had my name engraved on them. "Nicholas Newton. Like you'll forget these are your plates?"

"My father got those for me for my thirty-fifth birthday," I said. "It was last week."

"Oh... he must really love you, Nicky. Happy birthday, then! We should really have a celebratory wine..."

I watched as she sauntered over to the wine cabinet and selected a Sauvignon Blanc. While I knew that its pairing with the lobster would be less than ideal, I kept quiet as she dexterously filled my wineglass and then her own. As she lifted her wineglass up to her mouth, I noticed the red stains left by her lipstick.

Okay. So she wore makeup. No big deal. It wasn't like I actually expected this girl to be perfect according to the questionnaire. Actually, she was the complete _opposite_. But the evening so far had been pleasant, and I wanted to eat dinner before I thought anymore about our future. I probably would not see her again after tonight. To further the conversation, I asked her about her work.

Luckily, she seemed to have put the Monique incident behind her. I listened avidly as she chatted animatedly about a man in a top hat who brought a monkey into the restaurant and insisted on it getting a highchair, a couple who fought over what color of white the tablecloths were and ended up claiming a divorce in the restaurant, and a woman who accidentally swallowed the engagement ring her boyfriend had hid in the champagne.

"So she was gagging so much that I thought it was going to be a 24-carat diamond! And I did _not_ sign up to perform emergency first-aid on customers." Maxine finished, and I chuckled.

"Did they tip well?" I asked, and Maxine laughed. Actually laughed. It made me smile as well.

"Anyways, you're a genetics professor, right? I've got a question for you."

Maxine paused for a second, almost as if she was a bit wary of asking this question. "Do... do you know if people with widow's peaks have a greater tendency to leave? Because I read something on PopScience-"

"That's absurd," I said, and Maxine nodded, although she still stared at me intently. "A widow's peak is caused by two recessive alleles, and has no effect on anything except one's hairline."

Maxine exhaled. "Okay. Okay... Thanks. Just wondering. Because I was also wondering where parental instincts came from. You know, like the need to protect your kids and stuff like that."

"Instinct is just an expression of-"

"Becuase some people don't have those instincts, right? They don't feel the need to stay behind and raise their children properly. They don't..." She trailed off, looking sadder than I had ever seen her. I wanted to formulate the tactical response to ask her what was wrong, but found no words. So I stayed silent, half-wondering if I should pat her on the back in a comforting manner.

"Are you okay?" I eventually asked.

Maxine reached for a napkin and wiped her eyes, leaving dark lines of makeup on the white napkin. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. It's just... No. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

Maxine shrugged. "I dunno. Yes. Can we keep drinking?"

The evening had not been a conventional one by any means, so I just shrugged. "Fine."

We sat in silence for a moment until she apparently could not hold it anymore. "Fine. I'm not okay. I thought I was, but I'm not. It's my dad. Or rather, my lack of one. My mom... she died soon after I was born, and she never told anyone, not even my uncle and aunt who raised me, who my dad was. All I know was that she went to town at some grad party twenty-eight years ago. So I don't have any parents, and I dunno... I feel like it's messed me up a bit. To the point where my love life is in shambles... but that's a whole other beast to tackle."

"I don't think you're messed up," I said automatically. "I am not that proficient at dating, either."

"Really? But you seem to be okay at it. Except for the staring at my boobs part."

Damn. I had been trying to maintain eye contact as much as possible, but her dress was very revealing, and she had an interesting birthmark on her collarbone as well. "I was looking at your necklace."

Maxine raised her eyebrows. "Really?" She covered it with one hand. "What does it look like?"

"It's made of brass, or maybe pewter. It's small, the size of a quarter. There's a triangle, a line going through the triangle, and a circle in the middle. There's a tiny inscription in the center, which says, 'I open at the close.'"

Maxine nodded. "What else?"

"What else?"

"What bra size am I?"

"Am I allowed to..."

She smirked. "Yeah, you're allowed to look."

After thirty seconds, I said, "32B. Maybe a C."

Maxine looked impressed. "32B. Wow. And you got the pendant right, too." She removed her hand. "Too bad you don't know what it means, though. Deathly Hallows? No?" I shook my head, and she smiled. "I'll have to bring the movies over sometime."

Her phone suddenly buzzed, and she jumped slightly, "Shit!" She glanced at the time, which read 1:23.

I had not realized that it was so late in the evening. My rhythm for tomorrow would be completely thrown off, but that's what I got for messing up my carefully calculated schedule.

Maxine stood up and grabbed her jacket. "I'm sorry to leave so suddenly, but I need at least six hours of sleep before work tomorrow. Otherwise I get cranky and start yelling at old women who take forever to order their coffee at Starbucks." She stuck her hand out. "Well... it was good to meet you, Nick."

"Good to meet you," I echoed, unsure of what to say beyond parroting her own words.

Maxine scratched the back of her head with her hands. "Uh... Okay! Dinner was amazing, by the way. Thanks." She slowly walked towards the door, and my eyes drifted towards the plates on the makeshift table. The plates which had my name engraved onto them.

And then it clicked.

"Wait!" I said, as she was about to close the door behind her. Maxine waited, looking confused. I opened the door and grabbed her by the hand, pulling her into the house again. "I just realized. I'm a genetics professor."

Maxine looked beleaguered. "You... _just_ realized that?"

I shook my head vigorously, still clutching her hand tightly. "No... don't you see? I'm a _genetics professor_. I work with DNA sequencing machines all the time. If you have even a vague idea of who was at that graduation party you mentioned..."

Maxine finally cottoned on, and her eyebrows unfurled as she exclaimed, "Then all I have to do is get DNA from them and find out who my dad is!"

I let go of her hand. "Exactly!"

"You'd really do that? For me? You barely _know_ me."

That was true. I did barely know her... but I realized that even if she was incompatible with me on the wife front, I did want to spend more time with her, and this was the way to do it. "But if I have the resources to help, don't I have a moral obligation to?" I asked.

Maxine smiled. "Okay. Okay, Nick Newton. I guess I'll be seeing you sooner than later then, huh?" She turned to leave again, but then paused. "You remember what I told you yesterday, when you asked me what my name was?"

"Maxine Reine. But people you like call you Max," I said promptly.

Maxine smiled. "Well... Call me Max."

* * *

 **I won't be able to update for a while after this, because I don't even have an outline for the next chapter, but I hope this chapter'll manage to make up for that!**


	7. Chapter 7

Friday evening was a pleasant, cloudless day, and it found me wheeling my bike out of where it was chained near the front of the genetics building. The Dean had created a very strict rule that there was to be no biking around the grounds of the biology buildings, after some unnamed genetics professor had tried to grade papers while biking and had subsequently crashed into five students who had not been quick enough to get out of the way.

In my defense, I was not wearing my glasses at the time, and I had not performed the necessary velocity calculations to brake in time for the accident to be avoided.

In any case, students were giving me a wide berth as I wheeled my bike down the concrete path. I soon reached the front gates, where I was allowed to resume biking, and fastened my helmet on. I was about to mount my bike when a loud car horn startled me and caused me to almost slide off of my bike. I looked back at the source of the sound as an old red Camaro cruised alongside the side of the road, causing cars behind it to honk and try to swerve around it. The window rolled down as the car rolled to a stop in front of me, and my eyes widened when I saw who was driving the car.

"Get in loser, we're going shopping!" Max said, her eyes sparkling.

I stared at her confusedly. "Shopping?" Also, why did she call me a loser if she liked me?

Max rolled her eyes. "Oh, right. It's a Mean Girls reference, but I doubt you've seen that movie. Okay, get in. I'm gonna take you somewhere."

This was highly unusual. First of all, we had not agreed to see each other again after dinner on Tuesday. Secondly, I had made other plans under the guise that we _weren't_ going to see each other after dinner on Tuesday. Iggy had already signed me up for Tricks for Six, the group dating service that was taking place tonight. And lastly... this had never happened to me before, most likely because the other girls I had encountered were not.. were not like Max.

"I can't," I said, gesturing to my bike. "I have to be at a bar in forty-seven minutes."

"Nick," Max said gently. "I know you don't want to hear this, but sometimes in life, you gotta be spontaneous. Or else you'll explode. Or something. I met a male stripper on the street that looked like Neil Degrasse Tyson, who said that to me." A particularly loud car horn blasted behind her, and she turned around to yell, "Oy! Shut the fuck up!" Max then turned back to me. "In any case, it won't take more than thirty minutes. You in?"

I nodded after a pause. "Okay."

"There's just one problem," Max said, pointing to my bike. "I don't think that's going to fit in the trunk."

There was nothing to _think_ about, because it was blatantly obvious that my large road bike would not fit in her small trunk that was meant for holding a spare tire and some minimal shopping. "It won't."

Max shrugged. "Can't you just chain it to a tree, or something?"

Just then my eyes fell on a length of rope some students had left behind after putting up spring fling banners that hung from the branches of trees. An idea started to form in my head, triggered by the vast amounts of physics podcasts I had been listening to lately. "Actually..."

Ten minutes later, my bike was hanging safely from the roof of Maxine's car, and she gave a low whistle. "I'll have to give you props for innovention."

"You mean innovation?" I asked her as we got into the car.

Max smirked. "Okay, Mr. Smart Guy. Why don't you take the helmet off now?"

I began to blush as I removed the clasp that held my very expensive POC reflective helmet on my head. I hadn't realized I was still wearing it.

* * *

If I had to describe Max's driving style, I would describe it as a drunk monkey on steroids. The way she whizzed across four lanes at a time, took turns at almost forty miles per hour, and ran through yellow lights as they turned red was actually reminiscent of a study the physics department and the biology department had conducted a while ago. In it, we had used a drunk monkey as our test subject to drive a model car to test the effects of alcohol on the brain, and the results were pretty much the same.

Both times, people had screamed, ducked, and dived out of the way.

I gripped the dashboard so hard that my knuckles had long since turned white, and the calculations I was performing in my head did not help my mood at all. I just sat and stared, wide-eyed, too scared to even speak. If I were to judge her compatibility based on her driving alone, then she would be the single worst person in the world. I made a mental note to add a question about driving onto the questionnaire.

Finally, she parked on the side of a fairly deserted street, half of her wheels protruding onto the sidewalk. She glanced at me and gently patted me on the shoulder. "Erm... Nick?"

I blinked. "Yes. I'm fine," I said automatically, and she grinned.

"Yeah, I only passed my driving exam on the seventh try," she said, which did not give me much more confidence. "Anyways, we're here."

I looked up at the shop she had stopped in front of, which read _Jeb's Used Books_. "Here?"

"Yeah. C'mon."

I followed Max into the bookstore after making sure my bike was still firmly attached to the roof of her car. After the seventeenth illegal left turn Max had performed, I had heard something sliding off of the roof of the car. Luckily for me, that something was not my bike. Unfortunately for Max, that something was part of her car's roof.

Max led me to the back of the store, where all the used, musty books lay. She inhaled deeply and grinned at me. "There's nothing like the smell of a used book that just... It's great." I inhaled, too, but then started coughing as a lot of dust had entered my system. I looked up, eyes watering, to find Max standing over a table of books, all labeled _Harry Potter_.

And I finally understood what we were doing here.

"Okay, so we're going to need the first one, the second one, the third one... maybe throw in Beedle the Bard for good measure..." After five minutes, Max was staggering under the weight of ten or so books, and I offered to help carry them.

We walked to the front of the store, where the man standing behind the register smiled at Max. "Maxine Reine! Back _again_?"

Max grinned. "Sorry, Jeb. I just couldn't stay away! Can you believe my friend here has _never_ read Harry Potter?"

Jeb wagged a finger at me reprovingly. "You don't know what you're missing."

From the way they exchanged words, I gathered that Max came to this used bookstore quite often. I could understand why she liked it here so much- the atmosphere was very pleasant and quiet, like the university library. Some dust flew into my mouth, and I coughed again. Except for the dust, this really was a nice place.

Five minutes later, Max had promised to come by the shop again, and we walked out with an armful of books. "He's a nice guy," Max said airily. "I've known him for almost my whole life. But he keeps trying to set me up with his son Ari, who's, like, twenty." She wrinkled her nose. "I mean, the guy's still in college!"

I wanted to point out that the age difference between Max and I was greater than the age difference between her and Ari, but refrained from doing so. "You really like books?" I asked, feeling hopeful.

"You kidding? My apartment's _full_ of them. Can't get enough of them. Anyways, these are for you," she said holding the books out. "You mentioned your birthday was a couple weeks ago, and you've never read Harry Potter, so I wanted to get you on the right track."

I shook my head. "I can't take these from you."

"Why the hell not? We're friends, right? Friends do nice things for each other. There's all seven of the regular books, plus some extras like _Quidditch Through the Ages_ and _Beedle the Bard_. But don't let me spoil it for you!"

Oddly touched, I took the bag from her and said, "Thanks."

Max grinned. "Of course. Consider it repayment for the plate I broke at your house on Tuesday."

"Wait, you broke a-"

"Hey, what happened to my Camaro's roof?!" Max interrupted, looking away from me at her car.

* * *

Tricks for Six was a group dating organization Iggy had signed me up for. I had barely enough time to read their description on their website, but I did not have high hopes for this evening. There was a preliminary matching process, in which the form on the computer asked about my age, profession, interests, and whether or not I had a background in serial killing.

The last question was oddly specific, as I technically did have a background when I stomped on the family of cockroaches that had slid in through the shower drain a while back, but Iggy clarified that they were talking about humans, so I answered _NO_.

After their "fool-proof" algorithm computed the vastly inadequate amount of data needed to properly match people, it "properly" matched people. Six people, three male and three female, were given the date, time, and location of our group date, and this is where I stood, at 7:58 p.m. on Friday evening. My little detour with Max had taken nearly forty-five minutes instead of thirty, and the consequence of that was that I had not had time to go home and change out of my regular Friday shirt and into one of the three dress shirts Ella had bought me for my birthday ("You can't only have seven shirts, Fang!"). So I entered the restaurant with my Friday shirt, which read, " _Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind_."

Despite arriving at exactly the specified time, 8:00 p.m., only one woman was there.

I realized Iggy was right; that hands-on dating was really the best way of filtering out people for real. If I had given each of these women a questionnaire, they could have easily marked that they were early or on-time, but now that I saw it in action, I knew the truth.

However, I was not keen to rule out the other two women so quickly. I decided to temporarily allow the lateness, upon the basis that a single occasion, even if that occasion was a group date, was not indicative of a person's aggregate performance. I could hear Ella's voice in my head ("Fang, everyone's going to be late once in a while.") After all, Max had been late to our date at Crusty's although she had a perfectly viable explanation for it.

 _Stop thinking about Max_ , I thought to myself. She was not here, and she was out of the dating picture completely. I was here to find a potential wife that was _not_ the polar opposite of me. That was also why I had hastily scribbled in a question about driving.

There was also one other man sitting at the table, and I shook hands with him. He introduced himself as Jared, and he looked to be a few years younger than me, with a wiry build, tattoos on his arms, and hair so black that it had to have been dyed with an artificial coloring. The woman who was on time said her name was Sara, and she started off by logically dividing her attention between Jared and myself.

She said that she was a podiatrist, and she usually worked long hours so we should forgive her rather unkempt appearance. I looked at her and noted that she was wearing a minimal amount of makeup, but she still looked pleasant with her hair up in a doctor's bun. Jared confused podiatrist with pediatrics, and kept asking her how she liked children. By watching Sara's facial expressions it was clear to me that she was rather unimpressed by Jared's remarks, and this gave me a rare feeling of pleasure. For once, I was _not_ the most socially inept person at the table.

Sara turned to me, and before I could answer her question about my occupation, we were interrupted by the arrival of the missing man and two more women. The man sat himself down next to me, and I scooted my chair away an inch because he reeked of too much cheap cologne. He announced to the table at large that his name was Frank, he was a banker, and he was late because a client of his had defecated in his office and the mess took a lot longer to clean up than expected. "I'm a dog lawyer," Frank explained, when we stared at him confusedly.

I checked my watch. It was now 8:17 p.m.

The two women were named Gianna and Marie, who were a high school counselor and a nursing assistant, respectively. Gianna was wearing a casual outfit of black slacks and a blue ruffled blouse, while Marie wore a revealing dress that was both sexually appealing and weather-appropriate. Gianna looked to be about my age, while Marie was wearing so much makeup that it was hard for me to make an objective guess.

We all greeted each other, and then I turned back to Sara to resume our conversation. Frank interjected occasionally with racist jokes, but all in all it was quite a pleasant conversation. While we were talking intently about the effect of genetic mutations on the prevalence of foot fungi, the other four at the table began making small talk, which I have always felt is a waste of time.

I had previously memorized the questionnaire due to Ella's behest, and I casually interjected the conversation Sara and I were having with questions about her exercise and work. So far, she had answered every question correctly, and my hopes were being raised for another date when Sara excused herself for the bathroom. Thirty seconds after Sara's departure, Marie plopped herself down in Sara's seat and fluttered her eyelashes in my direction. "Hey, sexy."

"Hello," I said, unsure how to respond to such a statement. _Sexy_ was usually not a word used to describe me. Usually, women described me as _awkward_ , _shy_ , _intelligent_ , and once or twice, I had heard _cute_. But never _sexy_.

"What d'you say you and I get out of here?"

"And go where?" I asked, confused.

Marie threw her head back and giggled. "Oh, you know... some place more private."

I was beginning to wish Sara had never left for the bathroom. This must be what Iggy always referred to as _coming on to someone_. If I had Iggy's level of social and sexual expertise, then I would have definitely managed the situation adeptly. However, I did not have that level of expertise, and so I was floundering for words when the waiter who had been pouring us drinks walked over to our table.

"May I see your I.D.?" he asked Marie, who shrugged and opened her wallet to retrieve it. I thought I glimpsed a high school I.D. card in one of the pockets, but was unsure. Marie and I continued with our uncomfortable conversation until the waiter came back. "Miss, this I.D. is fake," he said, holding up Marie's I.D. "It says you will turn twenty-one two weeks in the future."

The commotion had gathered the attention of Gianna, Frank, and Jared, and they all stared at Marie, who blushed red.

"Marie," I asked quietly. "How old are you?"

She blushed a bright shade of crimson. "Uh... twenty-three?"

"No, she's not," Gianna interjected, holding up Marie's wallet to reveal what was indeed a high school I.D. card. "She can't be more than eighteen."

Eighteen! And here I was, thinking she was at least twenty-five! This was exactly why the question about makeup was one of the first on the questionnaire. There was no question about it- Marie was definitely incompatible, for hundreds of reasons.

I decided to divert my attention to Sara, who had come back from the bathroom just in time to see Marie being escorted out of the restaurant by a security personnel. "What just happened?"

"Makeup," I said simply.

The waiter reappeared at our table some five minutes later, and we were ready to order. Sara studied the menu and said, "Can you substitute the chicken stock in the minestrone soup with vegetable stock?"

There was no need for me to ask the diet question. I had retrieved all the data I needed. Sara was vegetarian.

She noticed my expression and felt the need to clarify. "I'm Hindu."

I had previously concluded that Sara was most likely Indian, thanks to her casual _kurti_ and her facial features. However, I had been critized for making assumptions based on race a while ago, so I had kept an open mind. I asked her if she liked ice cream, and she smiled.

"Of course. I love pistachio."

Why do all girls love pistachio?

With two girls down, only Gianna was left. I turned to her and asked how adept she was at driving, and she told me that she had already agreed to go home with Jared, who was looking triumphant. "He has a tattoo _down there_ ," Gianna whispered to me, and my eyes widened slightly.

That was it. I had eliminated all three women. Gianna and Jared left together after bidding us goodbye, leaving just Frank, Sara, and myself.

Frank seemed to understand that Sara had no interest in him and his racist jokes, so he also departed after making a joke about shit and also giving a show of tipping the waiter twenty dollars.

Despite not being compatible, Sara was very pleasant to talk to, and we kept talking and ordering coffee (decaffeinated) until we were the last two in the restaurant. After we were admonished by the cleaning staff, Sara and I walked out onto the street, where she handed me a paper with her number on it. I took it so as not to seem rude.

The evening, although very time-consuming and inefficient, proved how adept my questionnaire was at filtering out women. Without the questionnaire, I would have probably attempted a second date with Sara, wasting even more time, before I found out about her dietary needs. Really, she was the complete opposite of Max, who swore that she would eat anything.

 _Stop thinking about Max_.

* * *

 **I promise, lots of random plot points will be addressed in the next chapter. Also, Fang and Max are not dating, because he thinks she's so incompatible with him. In case you guys are confused about why he's out group dating, that's why.**

 **I'm also doing a bit of a self-plug here: I've recently posted a new story, titled My Name is Max, and it's going to be super cool, if I may say so myself ;) You guys should check it out! I won't give away any of the plot here, but if you want another different take on Fang, you should totally hit that story up! **

**P.S. I'm done with college and finals and I _think_ I passed... so to celebrate I'm going to update soon, I promise!**


	8. Chapter 8

Despite the group dating fiasco, Iggy was a committed, if somewhat misguided, helper in my quest of finding a suitable partner to settle down with. Today was Wednesday, and I was headed to a singles party in Wheaton.

The house was nice and large, with a brick overlay, and I found myself wondering how much it must have cost. The suburbs of Chicago were not cheap, and if I wanted to raise a family of my own someday I would have to start researching neighborhoods where getting slashed by drunk men on the sidewalk was not a regular hazard. It had only happened once on my street, but it was still one time too many.

I arrived at precisely the starting time of the party, at seven o'clock, and walked inside. As predicted, I was one of the first people there, due to most peoples' desire to arrive "fashionably late," which had never made sense to me. I was glad I had brought the questionnaire along with me, as the structure and pacing of the questions that I had developed allowed me to bypass the agony of unstructured social conversations with others, something that I had never been too good at.

As the female guests entered through the main door, I handed each one a copy of the questionnaire and an instruction to complete it at their convenience and return it back to me either at the party itself or through the mail. Most of these women just smiled and walked away, but I persisted in my handing out. After approximately one hour and thirty minutes, when most guests had arrived, I handed out my last questionnaire and was about to leave the party, my work finished, when another woman emerged from the living room and walked towards me.

She looked to be about thirty-four years old, and her BMI looked to be around twenty. She was definitely conventionally attractive, with long blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a smile which revealed white teeth, a sign of good personal hygiene. She held two glasses of red wine, the kind that came from a box in the supermarket. As she approached me she held a glass out.

"I thought you might be thirsty, after all your hard work," she said, smiling. Her heavy _r_ 's and her lilts made it evident that she had a Russian accent.

I took the glass of wine from her, smiling. After some self-analysis, I had concluded that it was unreasonable to expect a potential partner to not drink, and so I had also allowed myself the freedom to drink moderately. "Thanks."

The woman smiled. "Yes... a lot of girls in there were very amused at your questionnaire."

Finding an opportunity to get an update on the progress of my quest, I asked, "Are they filling it out?"

"Most of them, yes. But I saw one girl who was just drawing genitals all over it. However, she _did_ have about fifteen glasses of wine."

I found that hard to believe. Having fifteen glasses was a little too much, but maybe she was just exaggerating. "Good to know."

"Yes, well..." She tapped her wineglass with a sharp fingernail. "I didn't get one."

For a moment, I stared at her blankly. "Huh?"

She smiled. "I'm guessing you _don't_ want your future wife to be blonde, Russian, and have a PhD in archaeology? I was also a contender for the Georgia Olympics in 1996. Gymnastics. You wouldn't _believe_ what I can do in bed."

I blinked. "Erm..." How could I have made such a mistake? I had printed out exactly 27 questionnaires, as there had been 27 female RSVPs to the mailing list. "What's your name?"

She smirked, fingering the collar of one of the three shirts Ella had bought me for my 35th birthday. "Starlene. But most people prefer to call me Star."

I glanced at Starlene. "Well, it appears I have miscalculated and did not anticipate any extra females at this party. However, we can conduct the questionnaire in person, if you'd like." This way was actually better, because then it would be easier to determine if Starlene was being truthful or not.

Starlene grinned and sat down on the sofa. "Let's do it."

While in the haze of confusion of being under prepared and also under the influence of the disgusting carbonated alcohol that passed for wine at this party, I momentarily forgot most of the questions Traffic Stats+on the questionnaire. "Erm... Do you like liver?"

Starlene wrinkled her nose. "Well, I have eaten it before, but it is not nearly my favorite part of the cow."

"Do you smoke?"

"I'm Russian."

I did not see what her race had to do with the question, and I said so out loud.

Starlene moved a little closer to me on the sofa, so that her long legs were almost touching mine. "I'm guessing you're some sort of researcher, with all these questions."

"I am," I said, inhaling her perfume. It smelled of roses with a sharp tang, like cinammon or ginger.

"So am I. And I have been conducting a little research of my own tonight. I have concluded that this wine is disgusting." I smiled. Yes, the wine was quite disgusting, but it was still an alcoholic drink, and so I kept drinking. Starlene continued. "There's a nice bar a few streets down. We could try there."

I still had 17 questionnaires to collect, so I politely declined her offer.

Starlene took a deep breath and set her soft hand on the knee of my slacks. "Listen, Professor Nicholas Newton. I have not had sex for three months. And I would rather wait three more than do it with anyone in there." She jerked her hand towards the living room, where loud, raucous laughter was erupting. "Those men confuse geology with geometry when they're _sober_. I can't deal with it. So can I buy you a drink or no?"

I declined again. "You might find someone eventually, if you keep looking."

Starlene looked hurt as she stood up. "If I had passed your stupid questionnaire, you'd come with me. I didn't pass, right?"

I told her smoking was non-negotiable, and apologized.

"If you weren't so cute, I would slap you." Starlene muttered. "How do you expect to find a woman that answers every single question the way _you_ want it? Shouldn't marriage be about compromise and opposites attract and all that bullshit?"

"Marriage is a lifelong commitment, and I want it to be as close to perfection as possible," I explained. "This is so I don't have to break up with anyone, which would cause negative feelings for both people."

"What you're doing right now is worse, though," Starlene said. "You're rejecting girls that could be great for you before you even get a chance to know them. That is still causing negative feelings for me."

Before I could formulate a response to her statement, Starlene had left through the open front door.

I remained on the couch until someone slipped another filled-out questionnaire into my hands. I looked down to find the papers covered with crude drawings of genitalia.

* * *

My next venture was speed dating. The venue was a fancy hotel, a Westin near the city center. I waited in the hotel bar, ducking casually behind a large decorative ceramic pillar, as I sipped a gin and tonic and watched all the speed daters filing into the event room. When the grandfather clock in the lobby began signalling seven o'clock, I slipped into the event room and took the last seat at a table across from a woman whose nametag read Dorie.

She looked to be about forty-five years old, with spots of gray in her hair, and was not conventionally attractive. However, I kept an open mind because appearance only made up one-tenth of the questions on the questionnaire.

I pulled out one of the papers that had found a permanent home in my jacket pocket and scribbled Dorie's name down. Each date would only last three minutes, so there was no time to subtly inject questions into our conversation.

The bell rang, and I got to work.

"This is a questionnaire, and I've managed to sequence the questions in an order that will allow for maximum efficiency," I explained upon seeing Dorie's confused face. "I've found that I can eliminate potential partners in, on average, fifty-seven seconds. When we're done you can pick any topic you would like for discussion for the remainder of our time together."

Dorie frowned. "But it won't matter, because I'll have been eliminated."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean we can't have interesting conversations afterwards, right?"

She did not seem to understand. "The point of speed dating is to find someone you'd like to date. What's the point of talking to someone after deciding you don't want to date them?"

"Social convention dictates that we must talk to each other for three minutes," I said. "Now, do you smoke?"

Dorie sighed. "Sometimes I like a nice, long drag after a long day of work."

I shrugged and put the questionnaire away. Smoking was non-negotiable. "Perfect. Now what would you like to talk about?"

However, Dorie did not seem interested in talking further after she realized we were not compatible. She remained quiet, picking at her drink. So did the next woman, who was a recovering alcoholic. It seemed to be the pattern for the rest of the evening.

I never once got past the fourth question.

* * *

"I don't get it," I said, sending Sigmund flying into the air as I sat down on my end of the seesaw. The weight difference between me and the four-year-old boy caused him to dangle precariously in the air, so that Ella kept her eyes trained on her son instead of me. I continued talking anyway, because I observed her ear canal dilating slightly and I knew she was listening to me. "Most peoples' goal in life is to find a permanent partner, is it not?"

Ella shrugged, and I pushed off of the bark on the playground so that Sigmund flew towards the ground, squealing with joy. "I would assume so."

"Right. It's a reasonable assumption to make. So then why do most people want to waste their time with this dating nonsense? Marriage is about compatibility, and yet most people aren't making questionnaires of their own. They would rather talk about taking long walks on the beach than talk about their smoking habits."

Ella sighed from the bench she was sitting on. "Don't push off so hard. You're making Sig dizzy. And Fang... all I can say is that most people... don't think like you."

"Meaning?"

"They think marriage is romantic. They think it's about love. Your way is... unique. It's weird, for most people, to be interrogated about their drinking habits and their personal hygiene. I mean, Harry didn't woo Sally by asking her what brand of toothpaste she used, right?"

I stopped pushing off to allow Sigmund the chance to stagger off the seesaw, towards the swings, which were all occupied. "So I should be more romantic?" The word sounded foreign to me.

"I think you have to accept the fact that no girl is going to be _perfect_. Okay? Marriage is about compromise."

This sounded vaguely familiar. "Compromise."

"Yeah. Compromise." Just then, a commotion sounded from the general vicinity of the swings, and Ella looked up to find Sigmund and another small boy fighting over who would get to swing next. "Looks like you'll get to see it in action."

I watched as Ella skillfully told Sigmund that he'd get to swing after the other boy, as the other boy had been there first, and even made them shake hands. I sighed and looked up at the sky. It was bright yet cloudy, but I could tell where the sun was by its general brightness in the sky. Ella soon came back to me, smiling primly as though she handled little scuffles all the time. Obviously she did, as that was her profession.

"Let's recap. Who are all the girls that have made a lasting impression on you so far?"

I told Ella about Sara the Hindu Podiatrist, and Starlene the Sex-Deprived Archaeologist. I had thought about calling Sara multiple times, but the implications of living with a vegetarian were too much, and so I had not called her.

Ella frowned. "Fang. You're being way too picky. Frankly, Starlene sounds like a jackpot. And Sara sounds nice, too. Wasn't there another girl, though?"

I asked if she was taking about Brigid the Big-Breasted School Counselor, and she shook her head.

"Definitely _not_. No... Iggy told me about this girl. He said you had blown him off for a date with her."

"You mean Maxine the Starbucks-Loving Bartender?"

Ella nodded. "Yeah, her! What happened to her?"

"She's not... I mean, she's the exact opposite of what I'm looking for." I did not mention that I had promised to help Maxine find her biological father, something that seemed inappropriate to mention when I had basically admitted to Ella that I was never going to see Max again. I looked at my watch. I was actually going to meet Max in thirty minutes.

A moment later I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up from my perch on the seesaw to find Ella standing over me. "Fang, have you ever considered the possibility that a relationship can go beyond a questionnaire?"

Of course not. But Ella would never understand. She had married straight out of college. "You have a great husband, except for the fact that he likes to have sex with other women."

Ella winced. "I try not to think too hard about that."

* * *

 **A couple readers have started to call Fang out on his bullshit, which is good because recognizing what needs to change is the first step in making that change. Unfortunately, Fang himself seems to be rather impervious to everyone else's criticisms. Hopefully that will change as the story unfolds.**


	9. Chapter 9

**I'm giving this story up. It's OVER.**

 **And since it's over, I don't feel like I'm spoiling anything responding to the reviewers who thought Fang had a serious character problem. Thanks for noticing! He has PDD. The thing that was referenced at the beginning of the story? Yeah, there was going to be this big reveal... but I'm a shit person and so it never happened.**

 **If anyone who ever liked this story is reading this, I'm really sorry. I'm piddling along with** ** _My Name is Max_** **, but that's about it. I don't have it in me to write this, and I don't think I'll ever have it in me.**

 **But if you liked this and want to... I don't know, adopt it, expand it, modify it, make it significantly better, which shouldn't be too hard... go for it. By giving this story up, I give up any rights I had to it.**

 **It was fun while it lasted.**


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